Practice Area · The Process
Temporary orders.
Divorces are decided at the end and shaped at the beginning. Between filing and decree — often a year or more — temporary orders govern the money, the home, the children, and the business.
What the Court Can Order
The interim architecture of the case.
Under C.R.S. § 14-10-108, either party may seek temporary orders for maintenance, child support, parenting time and decision-making, payment of specific debts, use of property — including exclusive use of the family home — and payment of attorney fees. The court’s charge, in the case law’s words, is to maintain the status quo pending final disposition: keep the family functioning while the real questions are decided. Temporary financial relief can also reach backward — Colorado appellate decisions have upheld temporary maintenance awarded retroactively, in some circumstances to dates before the petition was filed.
The Automatic Injunction
Rules that apply the moment the case begins.
From service of the petition, an automatic temporary injunction binds both spouses in every Colorado dissolution: neither may transfer, encumber, conceal, or dispose of marital assets except in the usual course of business or for the necessities of life; neither may disturb the peace of the other; and neither may remove minor children from Colorado without consent or court order. For owners, the “usual course of business” exception is the operating room — ordinary operations continue, with an accounting for extraordinary expenditures. Documenting early what “usual” means for your company keeps payroll runs and equipment purchases from becoming motions practice.
The Compressed Hearing
One to two hours to set a year of your life.
Most districts set temporary-orders hearings at one to two hours split between the parties — sometimes on offers of proof rather than full testimony, frequently with mediation required first, and only after the parties certify they conferred in good faith. Consequential decisions get made on a fraction of trial evidence, which rewards preparation ruthlessly: the sworn financial disclosures and affidavit do most of the persuading, and the hearing confirms them. I prepare temporary orders as the first trial of the case — triaged issues, clean exhibits, numbers the court can adopt verbatim.
Protecting the Business
Courts guard companies from litigation overreach.
Colorado authority permits enjoining third parties or business operations only in extraordinary circumstances — mere apprehension that a spouse might dissipate assets is not enough, and ex parte orders that strangle a company’s affairs have been dissolved on review. If an overbroad order lands on your business, the response must be immediate; if you believe restraint is genuinely needed, it must be sought with evidence rather than anxiety. Where economic control is the problem — canceled cards, closed accounts, restricted information — courts have answered it with retroactive support and fee awards.
Funding the Case
Fee-leveling under C.R.S. § 14-10-119.
Colorado courts may order one spouse to pay the other’s attorney fees and expert costs — prospectively — so both sides litigate on something like equal footing. Appellate decisions have upheld substantial interim awards for fees and business-appraisal costs where one spouse controls the wealth. If you are the moneyed spouse, this belongs in your budget; if you are not, it belongs in your first motion. Either way, temporary orders do not prejudice the final result: by statute the court starts fresh at permanent orders — though the practical status quo temporary orders create has gravity, and positions should be chosen with the end of the case in mind.
The rest of this chapter.
How a Colorado divorce actually moves: temporary orders, mediation and litigation, privacy, and what happens when an order has to be modified, enforced, or appealed.
- Divorce in Coloradohow the process actually works→
- Mediation & Litigationsettle from strength→
- Privacy & Discretionengineered from the first filing→
- Emergency & Protection Ordersthe automatic injunction, and urgent relief→
- Modificationswhich door you knock on matters→
- Enforcement & Contemptorders are only as good as their enforcement→
- Appealswon at trial, by the record→
- Common Law Marriagewhether a marriage exists at all→
- Legal Separationsame process, different decree→
- Temporary Ordersthe first ninety days, governedYou are here
- Attorney Fees & Costsfee-shifting and the level playing field→
- Protection Ordersthe shield, and the defense against it→
Engagement
The first ninety days set the trajectory. Set them deliberately.
A consultation is a scheduled working session — in person in Greenwood Village or by video — in which we go through your situation and I tell you what I would do. It is a paid meeting, not a free call and not a sales pitch; my assistant quotes the consultation fee when you schedule. There is no chatbot here: the contact form and the phone both reach my office, my assistant reviews every inquiry personally, and the meeting goes on my calendar. Please hold the confidential details until we have run a conflicts check.