Safety Planning

A note before we begin: This guide is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. If any part of your situation feels urgent or dangerous, trust that instinct and reach out to the emergency resources below right away.

🚨 If You Are in Danger Right Now

If you are facing immediate danger, you do not have to handle this alone. Several Colorado resources are available around the clock:

• Volunteers of America Shelter Hotline: (303) 296-9090 — connects you with emergency shelter.
• Project PAVE: (303) 322-2382 — domestic violence crisis counseling and support.
• Denver Victim's Service: (303) 894-8000 — victim support and safety resources.
• Anti-Violence Project (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual Community Services Center): (303) 831-6268 — support for LGBTQ+ individuals.
• Colorado also operates 24-hour crisis hotlines, including a Child Abuse Hotline and a Rape Crisis Hotline.

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If you ever need to leave a dangerous scene, law enforcement responding to a protection order call is authorized to transport you — or arrange transportation — to a domestic violence shelter. You can ask the responding officer for this directly.

If you are in a life-threatening emergency, call 911.

Your Situation

Planning for your safety while going through — or preparing for — a divorce is one of the hardest things a person can do, because the moment of leaving is often the most dangerous. You may be weighing your physical safety, your children's safety, and your legal case all at once, and it can feel like protecting one means exposing another. That tension is real, and Colorado law recognizes it.

This guide will help you understand the legal protections available to you, how to keep your location and personal information private, how to involve the court and law enforcement in your safety, and what concrete steps you can take today. The core idea is this: your safety plan and your divorce are not separate projects. The legal tools built into the divorce and protection-order process are themselves part of your safety plan.

What the Law Requires

Colorado law builds several protections directly into the divorce process. After a divorce petition is filed, the court is required to advise both parties about domestic violence services and potential financial resources, and to strongly encourage parties to obtain those services for their children in appropriate cases. If children participate in those services, the court decides how to divide the cost between the parties.

One protection matters enormously for anyone who has already left: if you left home because of the other party's domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, or sexual assault, that departure cannot be held against you when the court decides what is in your child's best interests. You will not be penalized for getting yourself and your children to safety.

Colorado law also gives you multiple ways to keep your location confidential. A party can file a declaration that shields sensitive identifying information — your home address, work address, date of birth, Social Security number, and your children's addresses — from the other party. Separately, if disclosing identifying information would jeopardize the health, safety, or liberty of you or your child, that information can be sealed and withheld, and released later only after a hearing. Colorado also runs an Address Confidentiality Program (ACP) for survivors of domestic violence, stalking, or sexual assault, which helps keep your physical location out of public records. You can learn more at dcs.colorado.gov/acp.

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If you are a victim of domestic or child abuse and ever seek a legal name change, you are entitled by statute to have the public newspaper notice waived — so your new name is not advertised to the person you're hiding from.

A few other legal points worth knowing: mediation confidentiality does not shield statements revealing an intent to commit a felony, inflict bodily harm, or threaten a child's safety. And if a firearm is involved, an active protection order triggers a federal prohibition on the restrained person possessing firearms — a violation can be reported to local law enforcement or federal authorities in addition to pursuing the protection order itself.

What Courts Typically Do

In practice, Colorado courts treat safety as a condition that shapes the entire case rather than a side issue. Where abuse is found, a court can order that the address of the child or of a party remain confidential as a protective condition, and courts can seal records of interviews, reports, investigations, or testimony to protect a child's welfare.

Courts also use the parenting plan itself as a safety tool. In practice, when there is a history of domestic conflict, judges can build in protections such as supervised exchanges or arranging that transitions happen at a neutral location like a child's school, so that the two parties have little or no direct contact. If you need these protections, you can ask for them specifically.

Colorado courts also recognize the need for confidentiality in support-related and custody proceedings. In exceptional circumstances — where disclosure would endanger a party — a court may seal a party's identifying information in a support case, and in a custody proceeding, identifying information must be sealed when a party alleges that disclosure would jeopardize the health, safety, or liberty of a party or child.

Step by Step: What to Do

1. Make a safety plan before you act. If you are still living with the other party, think through where you would go, what you would take, and who you can call. Program the crisis hotline numbers above into your phone, and consider reaching out to Project PAVE or a local advocate to help you build a plan.

2. Decide how to protect your location. Before filing anything, identify a safe alternate address — a shelter, an attorney's office, or a trusted person's home — that the court can use for all notices so your actual location stays hidden. Nearly every protective filing in Colorado lets you omit your home address if you provide an alternate for service.

3. Enroll in the Address Confidentiality Program if you qualify, through dcs.colorado.gov/acp, to keep your address out of public records.

4. Notify law enforcement and keep a record. If the other party has behaved dangerously — especially if they've recently acquired a firearm — report it, and note which agencies you contacted. This creates a record that can support later requests for protection.

5. Seek a protection order if you need one. Colorado lets you pursue emergency, temporary, and permanent protection. A short-lived verbal emergency order is only a bridge — if you obtain one, plan immediately to return to court for a longer-term order before it expires at the close of the next business day. When you do, you can ask that your home, work, and your children's school all be listed, so the restrained person is barred from each one, and you can request that pets be protected too.

6. File your paperwork with the right confidentiality protections built in. Whether you're filing for divorce, requesting temporary orders, asking for a protection order, or requesting that your address or your children's address be withheld, the guided wizard on this site will prepare and pre-fill the correct Colorado forms for you — including the address-omission and confidentiality options — so you don't have to figure out which boxes to check or risk accidentally disclosing your location.

7. Think carefully before filing documents that describe specific incidents. Some filings become part of the public record and are served on the other party, meaning they'll see the incidents, dates, and police contacts you describe. If that disclosure creates a safety risk, you can keep such detail for hearing preparation and present it another way — the wizard can help you navigate what gets filed.

8. Protect your phone and your ability to reach help. If the other party controls your cell phone account, Colorado's process lets a protected person keep their existing number or transfer numbers (including children's numbers) to an independent account — without handing your new account details to the restrained person.

9. Arrange a law-enforcement escort if you need belongings. If a protective order is in place and you must return to a shared home, coordinate with local police in advance. Usually only one such escorted visit is permitted, so prioritize the essentials.

10. Prepare detailed testimony for any hearing. Write down each incident with exact dates, locations, and precisely what was said and done. Specific, detailed accounts carry far more weight than general statements.

What Research Shows Can Help

The items available here focus mostly on legal protections and resources rather than social science findings, so there's limited research-based guidance to pass along. What the available material does reflect is a consistent, practical theme: reducing direct contact between parties lowers the risk of further incidents. Building safeguards like supervised exchanges or neutral, school-based transitions into a parenting plan is a recognized way to accomplish that when there is a history of conflict. Where the record is thin, the honest answer is that the strongest thing you can do is combine the legal protections above with support from trained advocates.

What to Do Today

• Save the crisis numbers above in your phone now, and call Project PAVE (303-322-2382) or the Volunteers of America Shelter Hotline (303-296-9090) if you need to talk through a plan or find shelter.
• Choose a safe alternate address you can give the court for service, so you can keep your real location private on every future filing.
• Start the guided wizard, which will prepare your divorce or protection-order paperwork with the confidentiality and address-omission options already built in.
• Check your eligibility for the Address Confidentiality Program at dcs.colorado.gov/acp.
• Begin a written record of any incidents — dates, locations, exact words and actions — in a place the other party cannot access.

Related Issues to Be Aware Of

• Domestic violence and safety: When you file for divorce, Colorado requires you to disclose any prior restraining or protection orders from the last five years by case number and jurisdiction. Beyond that, domestic violence, coercive control, and economic abuse are factors a court weighs in maintenance decisions, and any court-appointed investigator must include everything they learn about abuse in their report — so safety concerns you raise are meant to reach the judge.

• Emergency and protective orders: You don't have to choose between a divorce and protection — within a dissolution case, either party can ask for a temporary order barring the other from disturbing your peace or a child's peace, and can seek a temporary or permanent civil protection order. Colorado courts keep the power to issue these orders even after a final divorce decree is entered.

• Temporary orders: While your case is pending, you can ask the court to set interim arrangements for support, use of property, debts, and parenting, with temporary parenting decisions guided by your child's best interests. A motion claiming a child is in imminent physical or emotional danger must be heard within 14 days, with any parenting time supervised in the meantime.

• Documenting problems and gathering evidence: Specific, well-organized documentation is what makes safety concerns persuasive — keep copies of all court orders and filings, and prepare detailed incident records for any hearing. A motion to restrict parenting time must state its grounds with particularity, and the court must hold a hearing rather than decide on the papers alone, so the detail you gather matters.