How to Fight a Restraining Order in Colorado: Hearing and Defense

To fight a restraining order in Colorado, you need to appear at the permanent orders hearing and show the judge that the petitioner has not proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that you did what they claim and will keep doing it unless restrained. A Temporary Protection Order (TPO) is issued on the petitioner’s application alone and usually lasts about 14 days until that full hearing takes place.¹ Everything you do between being served and walking into that courtroom shapes the outcome.

What to Do the Day You Are Served

Read the TPO carefully and write down the hearing date, time, and courtroom. If you were properly served and don’t show up, the judge can convert the temporary order into a permanent one without hearing a word from you.²

Then follow every restriction in the order to the letter, starting immediately, even if the allegations are completely false. No calls, no texts, no emails, no showing up in person, no social media messages, and no asking a friend or relative to pass along a message for you. Paying someone to locate the protected person is itself a separate violation.³ One slip can produce new criminal charges and destroy your credibility at the hearing before you ever get to tell your side.

Surrender Firearms on Time

If the order involves domestic violence and alleges the threat or use of physical force, the court must require you to give up all firearms and ammunition while the order is in effect. The clock is short: 24 hours if you were served in the courtroom, 48 hours if you were served outside court. A judge may grant one 24-hour extension if you can show you cannot comply in time.⁴

You can sell or transfer firearms to a federally licensed dealer, store them with a law enforcement agency or sheriff-contracted facility, or transfer them to a private party who can legally possess them after a background check through a licensed dealer.⁴ You must also file the affidavit confirming you relinquished them; failing to file it is itself a criminal violation of the protection order.³ Possessing a firearm or ammunition while a qualifying order is in effect is a standalone offense, independent of any other term of the order.

Ask for a Continuance If You Need Time

Fourteen days is not much runway to find a lawyer and gather proof. Colorado law allows each party one continuance of up to 14 additional days for good cause, and needing time to hire counsel or collect evidence counts.⁵ Request it as early as you can, ideally at your first appearance. The TPO stays in force until the rescheduled date, so every restriction continues to apply.

Should You Hire an Attorney?

Protection order hearings are civil, so you have no right to a court-appointed lawyer. If you want representation, you pay for it. Going it alone is a real gamble: a permanent order limits where you can go, who you can contact, whether you can own firearms, and whether you see your children on the same terms you do now, and it shows up on background checks.

An attorney who regularly handles Colorado protection orders will know how to cross-examine the petitioner, keep inadmissible evidence out, and aim your defense at the specific statutory standard. Private attorney rates for this work generally run from around $200 to over $500 per hour depending on location and complexity. If that’s out of reach, look at legal aid organizations and law school clinics that take these cases on a sliding scale.

Build Your Defense Around the Complaint

Start with the Complaint/Motion for Civil Protection Order (JDF 402) that was served with the TPO.⁶ This is the petitioner’s roadmap. Every specific allegation it contains is something you either disprove or recast with context that falls short of the legal standard. Read it several times and list each factual claim you can challenge.

Then collect everything that contradicts or complicates the petitioner’s account. Saved text messages, email chains, call logs with timestamps, photographs, videos, and social media posts are the usual sources. If the complaint says you threatened the petitioner on a particular evening, friendly messages exchanged the same night can quietly dismantle the story. Organize what you find in chronological order so you can walk the judge through a clean timeline.

Line up witnesses with direct, firsthand knowledge of the specific incidents in the complaint. People who personally saw or heard what happened matter; people who will say you are a good person generally do not. Character references carry little weight because the judge is trying to figure out what actually happened. Talk to each witness about what they observed, confirm they will testify, and make sure they can be at the hearing. Live testimony is more persuasive than a written statement.

What Happens at the Permanent Orders Hearing

This is a real evidentiary hearing, not a formality. The petitioner testifies first under oath and presents any evidence and witnesses. Listen closely, because you cross-examine them next.

Cross-examination decides many of these cases. Ask short, focused questions aimed at inconsistencies and gaps. Skip the speeches disguised as questions. If the petitioner put you somewhere on a date you can prove you were elsewhere, walk them through the timeline one factual question at a time and let the contradiction speak.

Then you present your case: your own testimony, your organized documents, and your witnesses. You will need to show any exhibit to both the judge and the petitioner. Call the judge “Your Honor.” Stay level even when the petitioner’s testimony frustrates you. Judges are reading credibility as hard as they are reading facts, and losing composure costs you.

The Legal Standard You Are Fighting

Before issuing a permanent order, the judge must find by a preponderance of the evidence that you committed acts justifying the order and that you will continue those acts, or acts of retaliation or intimidation, unless restrained.² Preponderance means more likely than not. That is a lower bar than the criminal standard, but the petitioner still has to meet it with actual evidence. A good defense attacks both halves: what happened, and whether it will continue.

The Allegations Are Not True

The cleanest defense is factual. If your evidence and witnesses show the events did not happen as described, the petitioner has not carried their burden. Alibi proof, contemporaneous messages, and witnesses who were present do the real work here.

The Conduct Does Not Meet the Standard

Even if some version of the alleged events happened, the behavior may not justify a protection order. Conduct that was rude, hurtful, or heated is not automatically enough. The judge must find a genuine threat of harm, harassment, or domestic abuse that is likely to continue. One ugly argument without any pattern or escalation may not clear that bar. One caution: the court does not need to find that you pose an imminent danger, so an argument that things have already calmed down will not carry the day on its own.²

The Petition Is a Tactical Filing

Protection orders sometimes get filed to gain leverage in a divorce or custody dispute rather than out of real fear. When the timing lines up neatly with the start of another case, and the complaint recycles ordinary relationship conflict as safety concerns, that pattern is worth pointing out. It works best alongside evidence that undermines the petitioner’s credibility on the underlying facts. Judges are alert to tactical filings but also take every petition seriously, so bad timing alone will not win.

Consequences If You Violate the TPO Before the Hearing

A first violation of a protection order in Colorado is a Class 2 misdemeanor, up to 120 days in jail and a $750 fine. It jumps to a Class 1 misdemeanor if you have a prior violation conviction, the order is based on stalking allegations, or you and the protected person were in an intimate relationship.³ Most domestic violence protection orders involve an intimate relationship, so a first violation in that setting is already treated as the Class 1 version.

A qualifying permanent order also triggers a federal firearms prohibition under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) once it is entered after a contested hearing with notice and an opportunity to participate. Violating that federal prohibition is a separate felony carrying up to 10 years.⁷

If You Lose: Modifying the Order Later

A loss at the hearing is not necessarily the end. You can ask the court to modify or dissolve a permanent protection order, but only after at least two years from the date the order was issued or from the last ruling on a modification motion, whichever is later.⁸ You carry the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the order is no longer necessary. You will need to submit the results of a fingerprint-based criminal background check completed within 90 days before filing, and you must personally serve the protected person with your motion and hearing notice.

One door closes permanently: if you are convicted of or plead guilty to any crime against the protected person after the order was issued, the order stays and cannot be modified or dismissed on your request.⁸ That is why strict compliance matters even after a loss. A single misdemeanor conviction tied to the protected person ends your ability to ever seek removal on your own.

1
Colorado Judicial Branch. Getting a Protection Order
2
Justia. Colorado Code 13-14-106 – Issuance of Civil Protection Order
3
Justia. Colorado Code 18-6-803.5 – Crime of Violation of a Protection Order
4
Justia. Colorado Code 13-14-105.5 – Relinquishment of Firearms
5
Justia. Colorado Code 13-14-106 – Issuance of Civil Protection OrderTemporary Protection Order Information Sheet
6
Colorado Judicial Branch. Complaint/Motion for Civil Protection Order
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts
8
Justia. Colorado Code 13-14-108 – Modification and Termination of Civil Protection Orders