What a Colorado divorce actually costs to file.
Not a range, not an estimate, not a lawyer’s blog. Every figure below is traced to a statute, a court fee schedule, or a clerk’s own published page — and linked to it.
See a different stateColorado
It costs $260.00 to file for divorce in Colorado. Below is where that money goes, what it does not cover, and what to do if you do not have it.
Worth knowing before you file. There is a genuine catch for low-income filers: Colorado’s own e-filing page states that ‘Currently, you can’t E-File if you have received a fee waiver’ – submitting fee waivers online through Colorado Courts E-filing is only available when responding to an eviction case, so a person who cannot afford the $260 must file in person or by mail while everyone else can file from home for a $12 e-filing fee. Also worth knowing: $115 of the $230 docket fee – half of it – is statutorily routed to the performance-based collaborative management incentive cash fund, not to running the court (C.R.S. § 13-32-101(5)(a)(II)).
Where the money goes
IMPORTANT DISTINCTION, because this is easy to get wrong: C.R.S. § 13-32-101(5)(a)(I)-(X) is often read as a list of add-on surcharges, but it is not. It is a distribution schedule that carves the $230 docket fee up between ten funds ($15 child abuse prevention trust fund + $115 collaborative management incentive cash fund + $50 judicial stabilization cash fund + $5 court security cash fund + $26 justice center cash fund + $1 general fund + $3 vital statistics records cash fund + $5 displaced homemakers fund + $5 Colorado domestic abuse program fund + $5 family violence justice fund), which sums to exactly $230. The filer pays $230, not $230 plus those amounts. The only genuine add-on is the $30 equal justice fee under subsection (9). The two real components are itemised above.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Docket fee, petitioner in a proceeding for dissolution of marriage, legal separation or declaration of invalidityStatute reads ‘On and after July 1, 2009 … a fee of two hundred thirty dollars.’ Same $230 applies to dissolution of a civil union under § 13-32-101(1)(a.5). C.R.S. § 13-32-101(1)(a) | $230.00 |
| Equal justice fee‘Beginning January 1, 2025, the court shall collect the equal justice fee … in the amount of thirty dollars on civil actions filed in district court … on behalf of the equal justice authority.’ This is the $30 that takes the published figure from $230 to $260. C.R.S. § 13-32-101(9) | $30.00 |
| TOTAL, petition for dissolutionMatches the Colorado Judicial Branch published List of Fees: ‘Petition for: Divorce, Separation, Annulment (invalidity), or declaratory judgment $260.’ C.R.S. § 13-32-101(1)(a), (9) | $260.00 |
Does it change by county?
No — the fee is the same everywhere in Colorado
The docket fee is fixed by state statute, C.R.S. § 13-32-101(1)(a), and applies ‘in all civil actions and special proceedings in all courts of record.’ The $30 equal justice fee under subsection (9) is likewise a flat statewide amount for district court filings. The Colorado Judicial Branch publishes one statewide List of Fees rather than county schedules, and no county or district surcharge on the dissolution docket fee is published. What can differ locally is mediation and any locally ordered parenting class, not the filing fee.
What the filing fee does not cover
The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce. This is where the rest of the budget lives — and where “not published” appears most often.
What it costs to file it electronically
- Portal fee
- $12 charged per filing through CCE (Colorado Judicial Branch 'E-Filing for Non-Attorneys' page), plus $12 to e-serve another party who has a CCE account (or USPS costs based on page count)
This sits on top of the filing fee above, and a percentage surcharge on a few hundred dollars is not small. Whether you have to e-file at all is on the Colorado kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Service of process by sheriff, per respondentNot confirmed. No statewide sheriff’s civil process fee is published on the Colorado Judicial Branch List of Fees; service fees are charged by the county sheriff. Reported as null rather than estimated. | not published |
| Parenting/parent-education class, if requiredNot confirmed, and I could not verify that it is mandatory statewide. Colorado courts may order parenting classes, but no fee for a domestic relations / parenting class is published on the Colorado Judicial Branch statewide List of Fees, and the Denver District Court pages I could reach publish no such fee either. Individual judicial districts appear to set their own; none published a figure on a source I could reach. Not estimated. | not published |
| Court-ordered mediation (Office of Dispute Resolution)Not confirmed as a dollar figure. The Judicial Branch’s Office of Dispute Resolution page has a ‘Fees for Services’ heading, but the link resolves back to the same page and no rate is published in its text. What IS published: form JDF 211 ‘Application for Reduced Fees for Office of Dispute Resolution Services’ exists, and it warns ‘I understand I will still pay a co-pay to the mediator, even if I qualify for a reduced fee,’ and that a filer who already has a JDF 206 fee-waiver order from the last six months automatically qualifies. Rate not estimated. | not published |
| E-filing or credit-card surchargeColorado Courts E-Filing (CCE): ‘The $12 fee charged per filing. You can file as many documents as you need in one filing.’ Separately, ‘If the other party has a CCE account, they are automatically Served, and a $12 fee is charged.’ If USPS service is requested through CCE, the fee is based on the number of pages (no figure published). | $12.00 per filing, plus $12.00 for service through the system |
If you cannot afford to file
More people qualify than apply. If this section applies to you it is the most useful thing on this page.
Colorado has a way to file without paying up front
This is a normal court procedure, not a favor you have to plead for.
- Who qualifies: Household income at or below 125% of the poverty line, per a table ‘Updated January 13, 2026’: family size 1 = $2,078/month or $24,938/year; 2 = $2,818 / $33,813; 3 = $3,557 / $42,688; 4 = $4,297 / $51,563; 5 = $5,036 / $60,438. See Chief Justice Directive 98-01. Alternatively, automatic qualification for those enrolled in Aid to the Blind Colorado, Aid to the Needy and Disabled (AND), Old Age Pension A & B, SSI, TANF, or SNAP.
- What it covers: Court fees. The e-filing page adds that the filing fees ‘can be waived if the court grants a fee waiver.’
- What to ask for: JDF 205 – Motion to Waive Fees; JDF 206 – Order Re: Court Fees. (JDF 211 separately requests reduced mediation fees.)
- How it works: File JDF 205 (Motion to Waive Fees) together with JDF 206 (Order Re: Court Fees, sections A through C). Must be filed in person or by mail – see the trap noted below. Inmates use a different route (JDF 201/JDF 202) under which fees cannot be waived but a percentage of the inmate account is taken monthly.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- No effective date is printed anywhere on the Colorado Judicial Branch List of Fees page, so effective_date is null rather than inferred. (The $30 equal justice fee is separately dated ‘Beginning January 1, 2025’ in the statute itself.)
- The dollar rate for Office of Dispute Resolution mediation – the ‘Fees for Services’ link on the ODR page loops back to the same page and no rate appears in its text.
- Whether a parenting/parent-education class is mandatory statewide, and what it costs – no statewide figure published.
- Sheriff’s service-of-process fees – charged at county level, no statewide publication.
- The 2025 edition of C.R.S. Title 13 is not yet posted at leg.colorado.gov (crs2025-title-13.pdf returns 404), so the statute text quoted is the 2024 official printout.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Colorado’s own agencies publish, not an omission on our part.
How we know this
Every figure on this page came from a statute, a state court system, or a clerk’s own published fee schedule — never a law firm’s blog, a legal-forms company, or a fee aggregator. Where a state publishes no date on its fee schedule, we say so rather than implying the number is current. Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
Court fees change, and they change without announcement. Confirm with your clerk before you write the check.
What people actually report paying
Everything above is the filing fee, traced to the statute. It is also the smallest number in a divorce. Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
We read hundreds of public accounts from people who have been through it. Three findings held up across nearly all of them:
- The total is bimodal, not an average. Self-filers cluster around $300–$500. Anyone with two lawyers and a real disagreement clusters around $20,000–$30,000. Almost nobody reports the middle, so “the average divorce costs X” describes almost no actual divorce.
- Cost is driven by the other person’s conduct, not by how complicated your assets are. People with millions who agreed to split evenly reported paying filing fees only. People with one house and one child reported $45,000 because the case got dragged out.
- Every large surprise is a third professional. The guardian ad litem, the custody evaluator, the forensic accountant, the QDRO preparer — all billed separately from both lawyers, and often introduced by the court before anyone had budgeted for one.
These are anecdotes, not prices. People post about a divorce cost when the number shocked them, so the high figures are heavily over-represented and the ordinary divorce is nearly invisible. Every figure on the full page is labeled with how many people reported it.
See what people report paying →Know someone in Colorado staring at this number?
A straight answer about money is more useful than most advice, and it costs nothing to pass along. Nothing here asks for their real name, and nobody finds out they looked.
Now the part the fees don’t cover
The forms, the deadlines, the residency rule, and what actually happens next.
Or find someone to help
Colorado attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.