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.
Protective orders and restraining orders in Colorado
Who can ask for one, what you have to show, what a judge can order, what it costs, and what happens if it is broken — quoted from Colorado’s own statutes, not summarized.
See a different stateColorado
Colorado calls it a civil protection order, and it comes in two stages under article 14 of title 13. A temporary civil protection order can be made without the other person present, and a hearing follows within fourteen days at which the court decides whether to make a permanent civil protection order. What makes Colorado different from most states is that the statute is not organized around family relationships. It is organized around what happened to you, and it covers assault, domestic abuse, abuse of the elderly or of an at-risk adult, sexual violence and stalking — whoever the other person is. A criminal court can separately impose a mandatory protection order on a defendant in a pending case.
The short version10 points · tap one to jump to it
- Does this cover me? — Article 14 of title 13 does not build the order around a family relationship at all.
- Can I get something today? — The ex parte standard is broader than the physical-danger test most states use, because it takes in harm that is not physical.
- The order after a hearing — At the return hearing the standard is the ordinary civil one — the balance of probabilities, not the criminal standard.
- Firearms — Colorado spells out the obligation, the clock, and a paper trail, and it makes failing to file the paperwork a violation of the order in itself.
- If they break it — Violation is a crime under s. 18-6-803.5, and the section does two things worth knowing separately: it defines the offense broadly, and it tells police what they must do.
- Worth knowing about Colorado — No relationship requirement.
- Can a permanent order be undone? — Two years before he can even file — and then a further two years after any previous motion is disposed of.
- The 2025 change that made Colorado orders easier to get — On 1 January 2025 Colorado replaced the test for a temporary protection order.
- Firearms in Colorado: mandatory relinquishment, and two different clocks — Colorado is one of the strongest states in the country on this, and the provision is easy to miss because it sits in its own section rather than in the relief list.
- The part that is the same in every state — This is federal law and it does not change at a state line.
In this subject 10
Does this cover me?
The short version10 points · tap one to jump to it
- Does this cover me? — Article 14 of title 13 does not build the order around a family relationship at all.
- Can I get something today? — The ex parte standard is broader than the physical-danger test most states use, because it takes in harm that is not physical.
- The order after a hearing — At the return hearing the standard is the ordinary civil one — the balance of probabilities, not the criminal standard.
- Firearms — Colorado spells out the obligation, the clock, and a paper trail, and it makes failing to file the paperwork a violation of the order in itself.
- If they break it — Violation is a crime under s. 18-6-803.5, and the section does two things worth knowing separately: it defines the offense broadly, and it tells police what they must do.
- Worth knowing about Colorado — No relationship requirement.
- Can a permanent order be undone? — Two years before he can even file — and then a further two years after any previous motion is disposed of.
- The 2025 change that made Colorado orders easier to get — On 1 January 2025 Colorado replaced the test for a temporary protection order.
- Firearms in Colorado: mandatory relinquishment, and two different clocks — Colorado is one of the strongest states in the country on this, and the provision is easy to miss because it sits in its own section rather than in the relief list.
- The part that is the same in every state — This is federal law and it does not change at a state line.
In this subject 10
Who can ask for one
Colorado is structurally different from most states, and the difference works in a reader’s favor. Article 14 of title 13 does not build the order around a family relationship at all. It builds it around what was done to you. Section 13-14-104.5 lists five grounds, and a civil protection order is available on any of them.
You do not have to be a spouse, a partner, a relative or a housemate. A neighbor, a coworker, an ex you never lived with, someone you met once — if the conduct fits one of those five grounds, the door is open. In most states you would be sorted into a different statute at this point, and some people fall between the two and get nothing. Colorado does not have that gap.
Orders can be issued by municipal courts of record where the municipality has authorized it, by county courts, and by district, probate and juvenile courts — and they can be made against a person aged ten or over.
Can I get something today?
The temporary order, and the standard for it
The ex parte standard is broader than the physical-danger test most states use, because it takes in harm that is not physical.
The threat of psychological or emotional harm is enough on its own. That is a meaningfully lower bar than "immediate and present physical danger", which is what several other states require before a judge will act without hearing the other side.
Fourteen days, and the temporary order holds until then.
The order after a hearing
What the court has to find, and how long it lasts
At the return hearing the standard is the ordinary civil one — the balance of probabilities, not the criminal standard.
Where the ground is sexual violence the finding is framed differently: the court must find by a preponderance of the evidence that the respondent engaged in behavior constituting grounds for an order on the basis of sexual violence, and that a risk or threat of physical harm or the threat of psychological or emotional harm exists.
The order Colorado then makes is called a permanent civil protection order, and the name is close to literal. It does not carry an expiry date the way a one-year or five-year order does. That is unusual, and it is the single biggest practical difference between Colorado and most of the country: there is no renewal deadline to miss, because there is nothing scheduled to lapse.
Firearms
What Colorado’s own law says
Colorado spells out the obligation, the clock, and a paper trail, and it makes failing to file the paperwork a violation of the order in itself.
The deadline depends on how the order was served. Twenty-four hours where the respondent is served in open court; forty-eight hours where served elsewhere. Weekends and legal holidays do not count toward either. A court can allow one further twenty-four hours if the respondent shows they could not comply.
Firearms go to a federally licensed dealer, to a law enforcement agency or a storage facility it contracts with, or to a private party who may lawfully possess them, in which case the transfer runs through a licensed dealer with a background check.
Then the paperwork. Within seven business days the respondent must file an affidavit describing what they had, and a signed declaration from whoever received it confirming the transfer. Failing to file is a violation of the protection order and triggers a warrant.
If they break it
What a violation is, and what it carries
Violation is a crime under s. 18-6-803.5, and the section does two things worth knowing separately: it defines the offense broadly, and it tells police what they must do.
The conduct covered includes contacting, harassing, injuring, intimidating, molesting, threatening or touching the protected person or their property; hiring someone else to locate the protected person; possessing a firearm while the order is in effect; and failing to file the affidavits described above.
It rises to a class 1 misdemeanor where the person has a previous conviction under the same section, where the order was issued under s. 18-1-1001, or where the basis for issuing the order included an allegation of stalking.
Shall arrest, not may. If an officer has probable cause that a served order was violated, arrest is not discretionary. Two things follow from that: make sure the order has been properly served, because the duty is conditioned on it, and carry a copy of the order.
Worth knowing about Colorado
The things that are different here
No relationship requirement. The order is built around the conduct — assault or threatened bodily harm, domestic abuse, emotional abuse of an at-risk adult or the elderly, sexual violence, stalking — not around who the other person is to you.
Permanent means permanent. Colorado’s final order does not expire on a date, so there is no renewal window to miss.
Threatened psychological or emotional harm is enough for a temporary order. Several states require immediate physical danger.
Mandatory arrest on probable cause of a violation of a served order.
Hiring someone to find you is itself a violation, named in the statute.
Stalking raises the penalty class — if stalking was part of the basis for the order, a violation is a class 1 rather than class 2 misdemeanor.
Seven business days to file the firearms paperwork, and failing to file is its own violation.
Can a permanent order be undone?
Two years before he can even ask — and what the court weighs
Earlier on this page we said Colorado’s permanent order does not expire, and that we could not tell you on what terms it could be modified. Section 13-14-108 answers that, and the answer is favorable.
Two years before he can even file — and then a further two years after any previous motion is disposed of. So a restrained person cannot make repeated applications to wear you down; the statute puts a two-year gap between attempts.
The burden is on him:
And among the factors the court must weigh is one that deserves to be quoted in full, because it answers the argument protected people most often fear:
The order having worked is a reason to keep it, not a reason to end it. Colorado wrote that into the statute. If a restrained person argues that nothing has happened for years and the order is therefore unnecessary, this is the provision that meets the argument head-on.
The court also weighs his compliance with the order, whether he completed domestic violence or sex offender treatment, how long it has been, when the last incident of abuse occurred, any convictions against you since, other protection orders against him, and practical circumstances such as how close you live and whether you share children.
If you are served with a motion to modify or dismiss, you are entitled to be heard on all of it. The history is relevant, and so is the fact that you are safe because of the order.
The 2025 change that made Colorado orders easier to get
On 1 January 2025 Colorado replaced the test for a temporary protection order. The old standard was “imminent danger.” The new one is materially broader, and if you were told no under the old rule, that answer may no longer be right.
The new standard — C.R.S. § 13-14-104.5(7)(a)
“A temporary civil protection order may be issued if the issuing judge or magistrate finds that a risk or threat of physical harm or the threat of psychological or emotional harm exists to the person or persons seeking protection.”
Three expansions in one sentence. “Imminent” is gone — the danger no longer has to be about to happen. “A risk or threat” is a lower bar than danger. And psychological or emotional harm is now enough on its own; there is no requirement that anyone fear being physically hurt.
The same subsection tells the court to consider all relevant evidence about your safety “regardless of when an incident occurred or the existence of a protection order issued pursuant to section 18-1-1001 or 18-1-1001.5.” Two more doors closed: the age of the incident is not a reason to refuse, and neither is the fact that a criminal-case protection order already exists. That second point matters — a criminal no-contact order ends when the case does, and a civil order is not a duplicate of it.
Subsection (7)(b) also lets a court issue an order in the name of a business for the protection of its employees, on the same standard.
Making it permanent — § 13-14-106(1)(a)
The ordinary test is preponderance of the evidence that the respondent committed acts constituting grounds for an order “and that unless restrained the respondent will continue to commit the acts or acts designed to intimidate or retaliate against the protected person.”
Sexual violence cases now run on a separate, easier test, added in 2024: the court must make the order permanent on finding the behavior proved “and that a risk or threat of physical harm or the threat of psychological or emotional harm exists to the petitioner” — with no requirement to predict that the respondent will continue.
And a provision that removes a real fear: “The court shall encourage the petitioner to notify the respondent if the petitioner intends not to appear at the permanent protection order hearing, but the court shall neither require the petitioner to attend nor assess attorney fees or costs against the petitioner for choosing not to attend the hearing.” You will not be punished in costs for staying away.
Temporary orders can now be held open for a year
New subsection (8)(b) lets a temporary order be continued for up to a year past the permanent order hearing date. If you then want the permanent order, you must move for it at least 14 days before the hearing. That option is useful where you are not ready to litigate but need protection to continue — but the 14-day deadline is unforgiving, so diarize it.
If they cannot be served
Subsection (10) was changed in 2024 from “may” to “must”: on a showing that you have made reasonable efforts at service, or that the respondent is evading it, the court is now required to grant further continuances rather than merely permitted to. A respondent cannot end your temporary order by hiding from the process server.
Subsection (9) also now bars service where the temporary order was denied, or where you move to vacate before service — so a refused application is not delivered to their door — and requires a firearm-relinquishment advisement on the citation in domestic violence cases.
Firearms in Colorado: mandatory relinquishment, and two different clocks
Colorado is one of the strongest states in the country on this, and the provision is easy to miss because it sits in its own section rather than in the relief list. It is mandatory, and it attaches to temporary orders as well as permanent ones.
The prohibition — C.R.S. § 13-14-105.5(1)
The court shall order the respondent “to refrain from possessing or purchasing any firearm or ammunition for the duration of the order.”
Not “may.” And because it attaches to a temporary civil protection order — which is issuable ex parte — Colorado goes further than federal law, which does not reach ex parte orders at all.
The surrender clock: 24 hours or 48
If the respondent is served with the order in court, relinquishment is within 24 hours.
Otherwise 48 hours, excluding weekends and legal holidays. The court may grant one further 24 hours where the respondent genuinely cannot comply in time.
Firearms go to a federally licensed dealer, to a law enforcement agency (which may contract out storage), or to a private transferee — but a private transfer only through a dealer-run background check.
The paperwork, and the deadline people get wrong
The respondent must file a signed affidavit of relinquishment, and for a private transfer also the signed declaration and the background check results. The deadline is seven business days from issuance of the order.
Note that carefully: some widely used summaries say three business days. The statute ties the filing to the affidavit under § 13-14-105.5(5)(b), and that is seven. If you are watching the docket, seven business days is the date to count to.
What happens if they do not comply
Failure to transfer the firearms, or failure to file the paperwork, is itself a violation of the protection order — and the court shall issue an arrest warrant. Possessing or attempting to purchase a firearm while the order is in effect is separately a violation under C.R.S. § 18-6-803.5.
That is the part worth holding onto. In many states the paperwork is a formality nobody chases. In Colorado a missing affidavit is a breach of the order with a mandatory warrant behind it. Check the docket at the seven-business-day mark, and if nothing has been filed, tell the court.
The part that is the same in every state
An order from one state works in all of them
This is federal law and it does not change at a state line. An order issued by one state, tribe or territory must be enforced by every other as if that state had issued it. And you do not have to register it in the new state first — registration is optional, not a precondition to enforcement.
The same section also says the enforcing state must not tell the restrained person that the order has been registered there unless the protected person asks it to, and must not publish anything online that would be likely to reveal the protected person’s identity or location.
The federal firearms rule needs a hearing first
This is the single most misunderstood point in the whole subject, and it cuts against what most people assume. The federal prohibition at 18 U.S.C. s. 922(g)(8) reaches a person subject to an order only where three things are true: the order was made after a hearing of which they had actual notice and at which they had a chance to take part; it restrains them in relation to an intimate partner or that partner’s child; and it either carries a credible-threat finding or expressly forbids the use of force.
So an emergency or ex parte order does not trigger the federal prohibition on its own — there has been no hearing yet. State law may go further, and many states do, which is why the state rule is set out on this page separately. In United States v. Rahimi (2024) the Supreme Court upheld s. 922(g)(8), holding that “[a]n individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
This rule is narrower than it looks, and the detail matters. Who counts as an “intimate partner” is a defined term that excludes dating partners you never lived with; the two halves of the third condition are not equally settled after Rahimi; and there is a separate federal route based on convictions rather than orders, which does reach dating partners. We set all of it out, quoted from the United States Code, on one page: Guns and protection orders — the federal rule.
How does this state compare? Ten states do nothing at all about firearms on a protection order; fourteen prohibit possession but give the court no way to collect them. All fifty side by side: which states actually take the guns.
You should not be charged for this — in any state
This is settled, and it is worth knowing before you walk into a courthouse. Under 34 U.S.C. s. 10450, a state applying for STOP grant funding must certify to the Attorney General that its "laws, policies, and practices do not require" a victim to bear the costs associated with the filing, issuance, registration, modification, enforcement, dismissal, withdrawal or service of a protection order or a petition for one — nor the costs of filing criminal charges, or of warrants and witness subpoenas. A jurisdiction that does charge has its funds withheld and redistributed to the states that do not.
Every state receives STOP funding and every state has certified compliance. The practical consequence, in the words of the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith & Credit, is that victims "should not be required to pay such costs in any state". That covers having the papers served on the other person, which is the charge people are most often asked for.
Two honest qualifications. The provision does not stop a court charging the respondent — many states order costs against them, and that is permitted. And it is a funding condition rather than a direct federal ban, so what a clerk does on a given day can still be wrong. If you are asked to pay a fee for any of the things listed above, you can say that your state has certified under 34 U.S.C. s. 10450 that it does not charge for them. Advocates can also raise it with the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith & Credit on 1-800-903-0111, prompt 2.
Where this state’s own statute says so expressly, that is quoted above.
Authority: Colo. Rev. Stat. s. 13-14-104.5, "Procedure for temporary civil protection order." Permanent orders at s. 13-14-106. Firearms at s. 13-14-105.5. Modification and termination of civil protection orders at s. 13-14-108. Violation at s. 18-6-803.5, "Crime of violation of a protection order." — Colorado publishes no free official code on a state website. leg.colorado.gov carries one sentence on the subject and a link out; the only state-domain copies are per-year PDF snapshots, which freeze at that year. LexisNexis is the publisher Colorado itself designates, so that is what we can offer: read the Colorado Revised Statutes on LexisNexis. It is a commercial site, not a Colorado government one, and we would rather label it than dress it up. Checked 29 Aug 2026.
How we checked this page
Every quotation above was read in the source named in the Authority line, not taken from a summary or another website. Where a source would not open, we say so at the point we relied on something else.
On this date we also re-checked every section cited above for repeal, renumbering or amendment since 2024. That sweep is not decorative: it is what caught North Dakota’s protection order chapter being repealed and replaced, Nebraska’s moving to an entirely new title, and a dozen 2025 and 2026 amendments that most published guidance has not yet picked up.
Nothing is outstanding on the main questions for Colorado. What we cannot promise is that nothing has changed since this date. Quote the words with confidence; check a section number before you put it in a filing. And if anything here does not match what a clerk or judge tells you, the court is right and we are wrong — tell us and we will fix it.
We keep a public record of every time we have got the law wrong on these pages, what caused it, and how long it was live: where we were wrong.
If there are children
What Colorado presumes about custody, and the emergency jurisdiction that exists when someone has to leave the state.