Appealing Court Orders

In those situations where a court order issued in your case is unfair, unjust, or simply wrong, that order may be challenged.  How the order is challenged depends on who issued the order, the subject of the order, and the type of relief you are seeking.  Regardless of how you are choosing to appeal your order, there are deadlines that must be complied with or you will lose your right to appeal forever.   

The impacts of your family law case will be felt well into the future, if not for the rest of your life.  If an agreement was reached, that will be the end of it, and you can feel confident that the terms will meet your needs.  If, on the other hand, the Court was required to resolve your disputes by entering orders after a contested hearing, there may be errors that need correction. 

Judicial officers (Magistrates and Judges) are human, and they make mistakes despite their best intentions. Perhaps the court has decided something incorrectly, missed a key point, or undertaken the wrong analysis.    How those mistakes are addressed depends on the judicial officer that entered the order and the type of error that was made. 

Motion for Post-trial Relief – In circumstances where an error is nothing more than an obvious oversight, it may be that you are able to make a request for relief from the judge who authored the order by way of a motion for post-trial relief. 

Petition for Review – In circumstances where a District Court Magistrate erred in their analysis, you will generally not be entitled to ask the Magistrate to amend their order; rather you will look for relief either from a District Court Judge by filing a petition for review within 21 days of the order.  This is the first step in cases where the order being reviewed was entered when consent was not necessary.  In circumstances where the Magistrate entered an order when consent was necessary, however, you will proceed directly to the Colorado Court of Appeals by filing a notice of appeal. 

Notice of Appeal – With errors made by a District Court Judge (and errors by a District Court Magistrate when the order was entered when consent was necessary), the primary avenue for review will be with the Colorado Court of Appeals by filing a notice of appeal, which must happen within 49 days of entry of the Order. 

Petitions to the Colorado Supreme Court – In certain circumstances, it may be necessary to appeal a District Court Judge’s order directly to the Colorado Supreme Court.  Generally speaking, however, petitions to the Colorado Supreme Court are filed seeking review of an Opinion issued by the Colorado Court of Appeals, which must happen within 42 days after entry of the final judgment on appeal.    

Regardless of which route you take to seek relief from an erroneous order, there are timeframes involved, and those timeframes are jurisdictional, i.e., if missed you will lose your right to seek a review from any court. Additionally, how your requests for relief are presented is nuanced and requires diligent research and detailed, yet concise, analysis.

Nathan has been successfully handling appeals for more than two decades, is passionate about undertaking the challenge of researching and presenting matters to appellate courts, understands each of the ways to seek a review of a court order and the time frames involved, and is skilled in presenting nuanced issues to reviewing courts.  Nathan will happily discuss appellate issues with parties or their attorneys both prior to a hearing and after a written order has been issued.