Colorado Learn
Twelve topics, ordered by what actually bites.
Twelve topics, every citation a stored-corpus token, ordered by what actually bites — the five-year reopener leads because it is the consequence Colorado wrote sharpest. In-scope issues route to working tools, including both computing engines with their statutory postures told honestly; out-of-scope issues get routed-out cards naming the official path, including the § 19-1-126 repeal told straight.
Topic 1
The five-year reopener: misstate an asset and the judgment stays open
Colorado's mandatory-disclosure rule carries the sharpest after-decree consequence on this platform: where a material asset or liability was misstated or omitted, the court keeps jurisdiction to REOPEN and reallocate the property division for FIVE YEARS after the decree — In re Marriage of Durie (2020 CO 7) confirms the provision's reach, and no separation-agreement clause can promise it away. Concealing property while the case pends also violates the automatic temporary injunction, so the same omission breaks two rules at once. Disclosure completeness is not paperwork here; it is what finality is made of.
Topic 2
91 and 91: the domicile gate and the floor that runs from JURISDICTION
Two clocks share a number and nothing else. One party must have been domiciled in Colorado for the 91 days before filing — a jurisdictional gate. Then the decree floor runs 91 days from the court acquiring JURISDICTION over the respondent, however acquired: C.R.C.P. 4 service, joining as CO-PETITIONER, or an appearance — the earliest trigger controls. The co-petition door is the pro-se-friendliest floor grammar on this platform: spouses who file together start the clock the day they file, with no service step at all.
Topic 3
The automatic temporary injunction: four restraints that arrive with the case
Filing a Colorado dissolution brings a built-in injunction — no motion, no hearing: both parties are restrained from disposing of marital property outside the ordinary course, from disturbing the other's peace, from taking minor children out of Colorado without consent or an order, and from canceling or letting lapse ANY insurance (health, homeowner's, renter's, auto, life) without AT LEAST FOURTEEN DAYS' advance notice and written consent or a court order. Its provisions print on the summons and the petition, and the petition itself must carry the petitioner's written acknowledgment of it.
Topic 4
Both dollars computed from the statute — one presumptive, one advisory
Colorado is the only state on this platform where BOTH family-money engines live in the statutes' own text: the child-support schedule (§ 14-10-115) computes as a REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION — courts start there and must make findings to deviate — while the maintenance guidelines (§ 14-10-114) compute the 40%-differential arithmetic the statute itself calls ADVISORY: they “do not create a presumptive amount or term of maintenance.” This platform computes both and badges each with the statute's own characterization, never dressing an advisory number as a mandate. The schedule was amended by HB 25-1159 effective March 1, 2026 — this corpus stores BOTH renditions, the pre-amendment table honestly marked superseded.
Topic 5
Colorado abolished “custody” — the law allocates PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES
The statute's own vocabulary is ALLOCATION OF PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES: decision-making responsibility (major decisions, allocable subject-by-subject) and parenting time (the schedule itself), both governed by the § 14-10-124 best-interests factors. The old term survives in conversation, but filings that use it as a term of art draft against the statute's grammar — this platform's filing check blocks it and the drafting surfaces speak the statute's language.
Topic 6
The affidavit decree: Colorado's no-courtroom lane, conditions attached
Agree on everything and Colorado offers final orders UPON AFFIDAVIT — no appearance required. The conditions gate it: the children door (no minor children and no pregnancy, OR both parties represented by counsel or a LICENSED LEGAL PARAPROFESSIONAL — Colorado's own 2024 answer to the access gap, written into the statute — with a separation agreement covering the children), service per the rules, no genuine issue of material fact, and property resolved. The honest caveats: the affidavit “does not shorten any statutory waiting period,” and the court is never bound — it may order a hearing anyway. Civil unions dissolve under this same article's procedures.
Topic 7
The Sworn Financial Statement: the exchange the reopener polices
Colorado's disclosure spine is the Sworn Financial Statement (JDF 1111 — the official form controls), exchanged early (commonly ~42 days from service or co-petition) with supporting documents tracking its lines, a certificate of compliance, and a continuing duty to supplement. The stakes are the reopener: completeness is what keeps the property division final — and concealing property while disclosures pend violates the automatic temporary injunction at the same time.
Topic 8
Temporary orders ride a MOTION — the injunction is already automatic
Colorado splits its interim layer cleanly: the automatic temporary injunction binds from filing/service without any motion, and everything with a dollar figure — temporary payment of debts, use of property, maintenance, parental responsibilities, child support, and attorney or LICENSED LEGAL PARAPROFESSIONAL fees — rides a § 14-10-108 motion, affidavit-supported. Expanded restraints and exclusion from the family home ride the same motion machinery on the statute's own showings.
Topic 9
Civil protection orders — and the criminal order that arrives on its own
Colorado's civil lane runs petition-driven: a sworn showing of imminent danger can produce a TEMPORARY protection order the same day, ex parte, with a return hearing where it becomes permanent, extends, or ends. County and district courts both take these. A different instrument arrives automatically with criminal charges — the MANDATORY criminal protection order — and confusing the two costs pro se filers real time. Municipal courts touch the DV layer only as a bounded enforcement crossover.
Topic 10
Relocation: geographic ties, and a doctrine that splits at the decree
When a majority-time parent seeks to relocate with the child in a way that substantially changes geographic ties, § 14-10-129's machinery engages — reasons for the move, reasons for the objection, and the child's interests, on the statute's own factor frame. Colorado case law splits the analysis at the decree line: the initial-allocation posture and the post-decree-modification posture run different presumption frames (the Spahmer and Ciesluk line — case-law doctrine, labeled as such on this platform, never paraphrased as statute).
Topic 11
Equitable division — and separate property's APPRECIATION is on the table
Colorado divides MARITAL property in proportions the court deems just, without regard to marital misconduct — equitable, not equal by mandate. The § 14-10-113 definitions do quiet, load-bearing work: separate property stays separate, but its APPRECIATION during the marriage counts as marital property subject to division. And the division shares a nervous system with the disclosure machinery: the five-year reopener is what happens when the property statement was incomplete.
Topic 12
Final when entered — Colorado's decree mechanics, told straight
The decree of dissolution is FINAL WHEN ENTERED, subject to appeal — and an appeal that does not challenge the irretrievable-breakdown finding does not delay that provision's finality (either party may remarry pending such an appeal, the statute's own nuance). Legal separation converts to dissolution no earlier than 182 DAYS after entry, on motion with notice. The only ground is irretrievable breakdown: both parties stating it (or one stating it, the other not denying) raises a presumption the court follows; a sworn denial can buy a 35-to-63-day continuance and a counseling suggestion, not a defense.
What's covered — and what routes out, honestly
qualifier + tracker + learn
§ 120.3 condition screen + qualifier + learn
§ 124 organizer + filing check + learn
schedule engine #5 + learn
formula engine #6 + learn
disclosure organizer + filing-check trap + learn
deadlines truths + tracker + filing-check shapes
safety router + learn
relocation organizer + learn
ICWA screen + learn
roles organizer keyed to the stored CJD 04-08 (directive level)
Title 19 adoption machinery with agency and counsel involvement — routed to the Judicial Branch's self-help resources and counsel; this platform drafts nothing here.
Dependency runs in the juvenile courts (Denver's separate Juvenile Court included) with respondent-parent counsel machinery — routed out with the official path named.
Probate-code machinery — and in Denver, the separate Denver Probate Court — routed to the court-run self-help resources.
County Child Support Services offices run the administrative machinery (the 9 CCR enforcement layer) — routed to the official program.
C.A.R. timelines and magistrate-review windows are appellate practice — routed out with the honest note that deadlines there are unforgiving and counsel-grade.