The Divorce Escape Plan — Colorado

From “I’m done” to filed, funded, and protected

• Phase 1 · Decide — then go quiet. The moment you announce a divorce, the other side starts preparing too: accounts move, documents vanish, stories firm up. Make the decision privately, tell only people you'd trust on a witness stand, and give yourself time to work this plan. Exception — if you are in danger: skip the quiet phase entirely and start at our Safety & Victim Resources center; safety outranks strategy, every time.
• Phase 2 · Paper the marriage — the investigator's sweep. Before anything changes, copy everything while you still have easy access: 3 years of tax returns, pay stubs, bank and credit-card statements, retirement and investment accounts, mortgage and deeds, vehicle titles, loan documents, insurance policies, business records if either of you owns one, and photos of valuables. Store copies outside the house — a trusted person, a safe-deposit box, or a clean cloud account. Disclosure is mandatory later (C.R.C.P. 16.2), but what you copy now is what can't quietly disappear first.
• Phase 3 · Build the money moat. Open an individual checking account and a credit card in your own name (at a different bank), pull your free credit report as a baseline, and build a realistic 6-month budget. Do not drain or hide marital funds — the moment the case is filed, an automatic temporary injunction (C.R.S. § 14-10-107) bars extraordinary transfers by both spouses, and judges have long memories for pre-filing games. Reasonable living expenses and attorney fees are legitimate; emptying the joint account is not.
• Phase 4 · Lock down your digital life. New email address on a new password (used for nothing else), two-factor authentication everywhere, turn off shared-location and family-tracking apps, check for shared iCloud/Google accounts, and assume a shared computer is not private. Your new lawyer's emails should never land in an inbox your spouse can open. If you suspect monitoring, use a device the other side has never touched — and read our digital evidence guide before you delete anything (deleting can hurt you too).
• Phase 5 · Kids come first — and status quo is strategy. Courts protect children's stability, so the parenting pattern that exists at filing carries real weight. Stay involved in school, medical visits, and activities — and document it. Do not move out and leave the children behind without legal advice; it can define "status quo" against you. Gather school records, medical records, and your parenting calendar. If you have real concerns about the other parent, log incidents with dates — facts, not adjectives.
• Phase 6 · Housing & logistics — stay or go, on purpose. Staying in the home preserves the status quo; leaving can be right for safety or sanity. If you're going: our free landlord letters cover ending a month-to-month lease cleanly — and DV survivors can break any lease early under C.R.S. § 38-12-402 for as little as nothing owed. Need your new address kept private? The state's Address Confidentiality Program does exactly that.
• Phase 7 · Pull the trigger — file it right. Filing first won't make a judge like you more, but it does pick the county (venue), start the 91-day clock, and trigger the automatic injunction that freezes the games. The opening sequence — Petition (JDF 1011), Case Information Sheet (JDF 1000), service of process, and the Sworn Financial Statement (JDF 1111) — decides how smooth everything after will be. Do it yourself with our Pro Se Self-Help, or hand the launch to Charles with The LLF DIVORCE Package — $3,895 flat, just until the ISC.
• Phase 8 · The first 30 days after filing. Calendar everything: the response window, the 42-day financial-disclosure deadline (C.R.C.P. 16.2), and the Initial Status Conference. Exchange disclosures completely and on time — hiding assets is the fastest way to lose credibility (and money). Run the numbers early with the child support and maintenance calculators so mediation is negotiation, not guesswork. Then hold the line: no venting texts, no social-media commentary — every message is a future exhibit.

The escape kit — copy this checklist