Appealing a Family Court Decision

A note before you begin: Everything here is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Appeals are among the most technical, deadline-driven parts of family law, so if at all possible, talk with an attorney about your specific situation before you act.

Your Situation

You've received a final order in your family law case — maybe on property division, maintenance (spousal support), child support, or parenting — and you believe the judge got it wrong. An appeal is your way of asking a higher court, the Colorado Court of Appeals, to review what the trial judge did and decide whether a legal mistake was made. This is a real right, but it's important to understand up front what an appeal is and isn't.

An appeal is not a do-over. You don't get a new trial, you can't call new witnesses, and you can't introduce new evidence. The Court of Appeals looks only at the same record the district court had and asks a narrow question: did the trial court make an error of law, make factual findings that were clearly wrong, or abuse its discretion? That's a demanding standard, and most appeals don't succeed. The process also takes a long time — often a year or more — and costs money you may not get back. This guide will help you understand what can be appealed, the strict deadlines involved, how to pause enforcement of an order while you appeal, what it realistically costs, and the alternatives worth considering first.

What the Law Requires

Deadlines are everything. Colorado law requires you to file your Notice of Appeal within 49 days of the triggering event — that's the final order, the denial of a timely motion for post-trial relief, or the denial of a petition for magistrate review. You may request an additional 35 days, but only by showing good cause, which is rarely established. Once that window closes, the opportunity to appeal is gone, with no exceptions. Colorado law is firm that once the appeal period expires, even a higher court cannot reverse the decree.

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File your Notice of Appeal within 49 days of the final order — miss this deadline and you forfeit your right to appeal entirely.

File in both courts. The Notice of Appeal must be filed in both the district court and the Court of Appeals. A very common, case-threatening mistake is filing in only one. The same goes for the Designation of Transcripts — the document identifying which parts of the hearing testimony become part of the record — which must be filed in both courts within 7 days of the Notice of Appeal.

What you can and can't appeal. Not every order is appealable:

• A dissolution decree is final when entered, subject to your right of appeal. A property division, maintenance award, and attorney fee provision are generally reviewed together as a whole.
• Child support orders are final and reviewable even when entered on a temporary basis. A temporary attorney fee award is also treated as a final, appealable judgment.
• An order allocating parental responsibilities is final and appealable once the parenting and child support issues are resolved — and an unresolved request for attorney fees doesn't hold up that finality.
• Temporary custody orders cannot be appealed — they aren't final. And once permanent orders are entered, temporary orders terminate and can't be appealed either.
• You can appeal the termination of the marriage itself only by challenging the finding that the marriage is irretrievably broken, or by raising a jurisdictional defect.

The record matters enormously. If you don't include the reporter's transcript in the record, the Court of Appeals will presume the trial court's findings were supported by the evidence — meaning you'll likely lose on any argument that depends on what was said at the hearing.

Accepting benefits usually doesn't bar your appeal — but be careful. Accepting maintenance payments or a fee award does not, by itself, prevent you from appealing. However, accepting the benefits of a judgment can waive your appeal rights when a successful appeal would reopen your right to those very benefits.

Alternatives to a full appeal exist. You can file a motion to alter or amend the judgment within 10 days of its entry, asking the same trial court to fix its own ruling. If you file that timely motion, the original judgment doesn't become final until the motion is resolved — which also affects when your appeal clock starts.

What Courts Typically Do

In practice, the Court of Appeals reviews most family law decisions for "abuse of discretion" — a difficult standard to meet. Courts apply a presumption that the trial court's order was correct, and they make every reasonable presumption in favor of the trial judge's decision. On property division, they'll alter the result only if the trial court abused its discretion. Child support, maintenance, and custody rulings are treated the same way — the appellate court won't simply reweigh the evidence or substitute its judgment for the trial judge's.

One thing you cannot appeal at all is the judge's credibility determination — the decision about which witnesses and exhibits were more believable. Appellate courts do not second-guess those calls. This is why your trial or permanent orders hearing is the critical moment: it's your best and often only chance to present your evidence and challenge the other side's credibility.

A panel of three Court of Appeals judges reviews the written briefs and the record, deciding whether there were errors of law, clearly wrong factual findings, or an abuse of discretion. In practice, a written opinion typically issues about three to four months after the case is assigned to a division, with decisions announced on Thursdays and mailed to the parties. The possible outcomes include affirmed (the trial court stands), reversed (the decision is changed), vacated (the judgment is ended), remanded with instructions (sent back to the trial court with directions), dismissed, harmless error (a mistake that wouldn't have changed the outcome), and moot (the issue is no longer live — for example, a parenting-time appeal becomes moot if the child turns eighteen during the appeal).

If you lose and want to go further, you can ask the Colorado Supreme Court to review your case, but that review is discretionary — in practice the Court accepts roughly 30% of petitions from published opinions and only about 1.5% from unpublished ones. That petition is due within 42 days of the Court of Appeals opinion.

Step by Step: What to Do

1. Consider the quicker alternative first. Before committing to a full appeal, weigh whether a motion to alter or amend the judgment — filed within 10 days of the judgment — could get the trial court to correct its own error faster and more cheaply.

2. Calendar your 49-day deadline immediately. Count 49 days from your final order (or from the denial of post-trial relief or magistrate review). This is the hard deadline for your Notice of Appeal. Note it, and build in buffer time.

3. Prepare and file your Notice of Appeal in BOTH courts. It goes to the Court of Appeals and to the district court where your case was heard. The guided wizard on this site can prepare and pre-fill the appeal paperwork for you, so you don't have to track down and fill in the correct forms by hand.

4. Pay — or seek waivers for — the required amounts. You'll face a filing fee at the Court of Appeals and an appeal cost bond at the district court (which exists to cover the other side's costs if you lose, and is returned if you win or if the other party doesn't participate). If you can't afford these, the wizard can prepare the motions to waive the filing fee and the cost bond. Be aware: transcript costs cannot be waived by any court.

5. File the Designation of Transcripts within 7 days — in both courts. Transcripts are not automatically included. If you want hearing testimony before the Court of Appeals, you must designate it. Order and pay for transcripts early; the district court will not send the record if transcripts are ordered but unpaid. Budget roughly $150 per hour of court time.

6. Serve the other parties. Serve copies of both your Notice of Appeal and your Designation of Transcripts on all other parties in the case.

7. Make sure the record arrives. The district court — not you — sends the Record on Appeal to the Court of Appeals, and it must arrive within 63 days of your Notice of Appeal. But confirming it actually arrives is your responsibility. The record includes the case file, hearing exhibits, the district court's orders, and any transcripts you purchased.

8. If you need to pause enforcement, request a stay. File a Motion for a Stay of Action in the district court to stop a final order from being enforced during the appeal. Expect to post a supersedeas bond — typically set at 125% of the judgment against you. If the district court denies the stay, you can refile the motion in the Court of Appeals and attach the denial.

9. Write and file your briefs on schedule. Your Opening Brief is due 42 days after the record is filed; the other side's Answer Brief is due 35 days after that; your optional Reply Brief is due 21 days after the Answer Brief. All briefs go to the Court of Appeals.

10. Wait for the decision — and consider further review. Expect a written opinion roughly three to four months after assignment to a panel. If you disagree, you have 42 days to petition the Supreme Court, keeping in mind how rarely that review is granted.

What Research Shows Can Help

The items available here focus on the law and procedure of appeals rather than social science research on outcomes. There is no research-based guidance in this material to pass along, so I won't invent any. The most practical, evidence-backed point that does come through is a procedural one: because appellate courts won't second-guess credibility findings or accept new evidence, the trial or permanent orders hearing is where your case is truly won or lost — thorough preparation there matters far more than hoping to fix things on appeal.

What to Do Today

• Find your final order and count to 49 days. Mark that deadline on your calendar now — everything else depends on it.
• Decide whether a 10-day motion to amend the judgment is still available to you and worth filing with the trial court first.
• Start the guided wizard so your Notice of Appeal, Designation of Transcripts, and any fee- or bond-waiver motions can be prepared and pre-filled correctly.
• Contact the court's appeals self-help resources (the self-help email for appeals is available through the Court of Appeals) if you're self-represented and have procedural questions.
• Order your transcripts early and budget for them — remember they can't be waived, and an unpaid order will stall your entire appeal.

Related Issues to Be Aware Of

• Attorney fees and court costs. A Colorado court can order one spouse to pay toward the other's attorney fees and costs based on each party's financial resources, including costs incurred after judgment. This cuts both ways in an appeal: if you lose, the court can order you to pay the other side's costs and possibly their fees, so factor that risk into your decision to appeal. Note too that a fee denial without written findings can't be meaningfully reviewed, and a temporary fee award is itself appealable.

• How to modify a court order. If your real goal is to change something going forward — like child support after a change in circumstances — modifying the order may serve you better than an appeal, which only reviews whether the trial judge erred at the time. Importantly, while an appeal is pending, the trial court generally cannot modify the parenting or decision-making orders that are material to the appeal, except in a narrow emergency where imminent harm to a child is alleged. Pick your path carefully, because the two can't always run at once.

• The final hearing. Because appellate courts won't reweigh evidence or revisit credibility, the final hearing is the decisive moment in your case. The decree becomes final when entered, subject to your appeal rights — and an appeal that doesn't challenge the irretrievable-breakdown finding won't delay the dissolution itself, meaning either party may remarry while the rest of the appeal proceeds.