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.
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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 an $18 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)).
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — The filer pays $230, not $230 plus those amounts.
- Does it change by county? — 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.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- How we know this — Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 7
Where the money goes
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — The filer pays $230, not $230 plus those amounts.
- Does it change by county? — 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.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- How we know this — Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 7
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 itemized 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 |
WHAT CHANGES ON 1 JULY 2027, and it is in the statute already. HB26-1422 rewrites § 13-32-101(1) with effect from 1 July 2027: the petitioner's docket fee drops to “two hundred twenty-five dollars,” the $5 court security component of the distribution schedule is repealed (§ 13-32-101(5)(a)(IV)(B)), and a new subsection (10) directs the court to collect a separate $10 court security surcharge on district court civil filings on behalf of the court security authority under § 13-1-505. On the face of the statute that is $225 + $30 + $10 = $265 for a petition filed on or after 1 July 2027. We are not presenting $265 as a published schedule figure: the Judicial Branch has not yet republished its List of Fees for it, and until it does the figure to rely on is the $260 above. C.R.S. § 13-32-101(1)(a), (5)(a)(IV)(B), (10); § 13-1-505(1)(a)(I)
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
- $18 per filing, plus $18 to e-serve another party who has a CCE account — both read off the Judicial Branch's own “E-Filing Pricing Model – Effective October 1, 2026” sheet, which is linked from the E-Filing for Non-Attorneys page. Both charges were $12 before that sheet took effect
This sits on top of the filing fee above. It is a flat charge, not a percentage: $18 covers one filing however many documents are in it. The one percentage in Colorado's pricing sheet is a card fee of “up to 3%,” and the sheet scopes it to attorneys and licensed legal paraprofessionals paying an e-filing invoice by card; no card surcharge is published for a self-represented filer. Worth knowing where the $12 figure still lives: Chief Justice Directive 08-02, the directive that sets these cost-recovery fees, was last amended in March 2023 and its Attachment B still publishes a $12.00 chart stamped “Effective July 13, 2020.” The pricing sheet is the current instrument; the directive has not caught up. E-Filing for Non-Attorneys, and the pricing model sheet linked from it; Chief Justice Directives index. Whether you have to e-file at all is on the Colorado kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Service of process by sheriff, per respondentNot a single statewide price, but there is a statewide statutory ceiling, and it is not on the court's fee schedule — it is in the county-government title. C.R.S. § 30-1-104(1)(a.5): for serving and returning a summons or other writ of process in other than a criminal action, “on each party served, in counties of every class, actual expenses, but not more than thirty-five dollars.” Mileage is charged on top under § 30-1-104(1)(h.5), either at the county mileage rate or under a zone- or zip-code-based schedule the county commissioners set by resolution. A sheriff who does not serve charges for the return: actual expenses, not more than $20 (§ 30-1-104(1)(b.5)). Every such officer must keep a “fair table” of fees posted in the office (§ 30-1-108), so the figure your county actually charges is posted at the civil unit. What we are not claiming: that any particular sheriff charges the maximum, or what the mileage comes to. C.R.S. § 30-1-104(1)(a.5), (1)(b.5), (1)(h.5); § 30-1-108 | actual expenses, max $35 per party served, plus mileage |
| Parenting/parent-education class, if requiredIt is not mandatory statewide, and the statute is the reason there is no statewide figure. C.R.S. § 14-10-123.7(2): a court “may order a parent whose child is under eighteen years of age to attend a program” — permissive, and only where a parent of a minor is a named party. Subsection (3) leaves the program itself to each judicial district (or combination designated by the chief justice), to run directly or by competitively negotiated contract with private providers, and says it “shall be paid for by the participating parents in accordance with each parent's ability to pay.” So the price is set district by district against your ability to pay, which is why no figure appears on the statewide List of Fees and why we do not give one. Ask the division that is hearing your case. C.R.S. § 14-10-123.7(2), (3) | set by your judicial district, on ability to pay |
| Court-ordered mediation (Office of Dispute Resolution)Colorado publishes this one, in a signed order rather than on the fee schedule. The “Fees for Services” link on the Judiciary's mediation page resolves to a Supreme Court of Colorado, Office of the Chief Justice order, “Fee Schedule for Dispute Resolution Services Provided by the Office of Dispute Resolution Independent Contractors,” made under § 13-22-305(3) and signed by Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright. For district court civil cases, which it states include domestic relations: $75 per party per hour. On an indigency determination it is $15 per party per hour. A party may be charged up to two hours for a cancellation inside seven days or a no-show. CJD 98-01 section VII adds that reduced or waived mediation fees need a copy of an indigency order or certificate less than six months old, or a JDF 211 submitted to ODR. One oddity we will not paper over: the order's own effective line reads “effective February , 2023” with the day left blank, and the Judiciary publishes the file as signed 6 March 2023. Chief Justice order, Fee Schedule for Dispute Resolution Services, linked as “Fees for Services” | $75 per party per hour ($15 if indigent) |
| Copies, certified copies and blank form packetsPublished, and small, on the Miscellaneous Fees table of the List of Fees. Copies $0.25 a single side and $0.50 double-sided, with a stated “$15 max copy fee for parties to the case” (C.R.S. § 13-32-104(1)(a) and CJD 06-01 III(d)(i); the statute's own ceiling is higher, at seventy-five cents a page for photographic copies). Certifying a copy of any record on file — which is what a certified copy of your decree is — $20 (§ 13-32-104(1)(f)). A certificate of exemplification, $20 (§ 13-32-104(1)(h)). Printed form instructions are free and blank forms or form packets are $0.25 per printed side, except protection order forms and packets, which carry no fee at all (CJD 06-01 III(d)(iii)). Colorado Judicial Branch, List of Fees, Miscellaneous Fees; C.R.S. § 13-32-104(1) | $0.25–$0.50 a page ($15 cap); $20 to certify |
| E-filing, e-service and mail through the portalColorado Courts E-Filing (CCE): 'The $18 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 $18 fee is charged.' Both were $12 until the Judicial Branch's “E-Filing Pricing Model – Effective October 1, 2026” sheet took effect. That sheet also publishes the USPS figures, which we previously recorded as unpublished: printing $18.00 per transaction plus $0.04 a page, postage by page band ($0.78 domestic for 1–5 pages, $1.07 for 6–10, $1.36 for 11–17, rising to $12.90 for 80–150), and certified mail $24.55 on top of postage. Card fee up to 3%, scoped by the sheet to attorneys and licensed legal paraprofessionals paying an invoice; none published for a self-represented filer. | $18.00 per filing, plus $18.00 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. The Fee Waivers page stops at five, but the directive itself carries the rest: 6 = $5,776 / $69,313; 7 = $6,516 / $78,188; 8 = $7,255 / $87,063, and above eight add $592 a month or $7,100 a year for each additional person. The table is sourced in the directive to the Federal Register (91 FR 1797, 15 January 2026). 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. Chief Justice Directive 98-01.
- What it covers, and what it does not: Court fees. The e-filing page adds that the filing fees ‘can be waived if the court grants a fee waiver.’ CJD 98-01 is more specific in both directions. Section IV: if the court finds you indigent, “any costs owed to the state may be waived,” and it lists filing fees, reasonable copy fees, forms and instruction fees, jury fees, E-file and E-service fees, and research fees. Section III: anything owed to someone other than the State of Colorado cannot be waived on indigency — so transcript fees, witness fees and process server fees stay with you. Section V adds a real exception on service: where the court itself has ordered service and delivers the papers to the sheriff, the court may pay the sheriff out of mandated costs; if you hand them over yourself, the fee is yours.
- 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
- What any individual county sheriff actually charges to serve a divorce petition, and what the mileage adds. The statute caps it at $35 a party served plus mileage and § 30-1-108 requires each office to keep a table of its fees posted, but posted in the office is not published online: the 64 county figures are a counter-by-counter question, not a scrape.
- What any individual judicial district charges for its parent-education program. § 14-10-123.7(3) devolves the program and its price to each district, on each parent’s ability to pay, so there may be no single figure to find; none of the district pages we could reach publishes one.
- Whether a fee waiver reaches the $18 CCE charge in practice. CJD 98-01 section IV lists E-file and E-service fees among the costs that may be waived, while the e-filing page says you cannot e-file at all once you have a fee waiver. Those two can both be true — a waiver you cannot use, because the route is closed — but the Judicial Branch does not say so anywhere we could find.
- When the portal charge actually rose from $12 to $18. The pricing sheet is stamped “Effective October 1, 2026”, which is the date we use, but CJD 08-02, the directive that is supposed to set these fees, was last amended in March 2023 and still publishes the superseded $12.00 chart. We could not reach web.archive.org from the machine this check runs on, so we cannot show you the change happening.
- Whether the Judicial Branch will republish the List of Fees for the 1 July 2027 statutory figures before they take effect. The statute is already amended; the schedule is not.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. These are real limits on what Colorado’s own agencies publish, not an omission on our part. This list is shorter than it was before the 19 October 2026 re-check: three things we had recorded here as unpublished — the mediation rate, the sheriff’s statutory ceiling and the portal’s mail charges — turned out to be published, in a signed Chief Justice order, in the county-government title of the statutes, and on a pricing sheet. They are now in the tables above, and the error is written up at corrections.
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.
The rest of what we have written about Colorado. Every figure is quoted from Colorado’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Common questions about filing costs in Colorado
Short answers to what people ask most about this number. Everything here is drawn from the same sources as the figures above.
How much does it cost to file for divorce in Colorado?
$260 to open the case. What the court actually publishes is $260.00. Every figure on this page is traced to Colorado’s own statute or its courts’ published fee schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Is the divorce filing fee the same in every Colorado county?
Yes. Colorado sets the filing fee statewide, so the figure is the same whichever county you file in. It is $260.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in Colorado?
No, and it is the small number. The filing fee is what it costs to open the case. Serving the papers, any required parenting class, copies and certifications, an attorney if you use one, and the cost of running two households instead of one are all separate — and together they are many times larger. The sections above set out what this figure does and does not buy.
What if I cannot afford the filing fee in Colorado?
There is a process for asking the court to waive or defer it, and this page sets out what Colorado requires. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this Colorado figure, and where does it come from?
It is quoted from the court’s own published schedule or the statute that sets it, with the date it was last checked shown on the page. Where a figure could not be confirmed from an official source, this site says so rather than estimating — and where a number could only be reached by arithmetic rather than read off a published schedule, it is left out rather than presented as published. That rule is why some rows here carry a statutory ceiling, or a price your own judicial district sets, instead of a tidy single figure, and it is the whole basis on which these pages can be reproduced. The full fifty-state comparison is at thecusp.app/divorce-costs/, free to reproduce under the license published there.
Choosing an agent for a divorce sale is a different problem from choosing one for an ordinary sale: who the agent is allowed to talk to, who has to sign, what happens when one of you will not, and the three separate conflicts of interest that come up when one spouse found the agent first. How to choose a real estate agent for a divorce sale sets out what to ask, and how to check a credential yourself — no divorce credential is official with the National Association of Realtors.
The Cusp receives a referral fee from agents it vets and trains to handle divorce clients.