Colorado's sealing statute, kept current and read out loud.

The Rules

Eligibility is not a fixed thing. Colorado amended its sealing law in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2024, and each amendment quietly changed who qualifies. Most of what a search engine returns on this subject was written before the last amendment and is now wrong in ways a reader cannot see.

So the eligibility logic here is versioned like software. Every waiting period, exclusion, form number and court fee carries the statute it comes from, and every Answer records the version that produced it. An answer given today can be rebuilt exactly as it was given.

What has changed

Every version that has been live, newest first, with what moved and why. A correction from someone who knows the statute better than we do is the best thing that can happen here, and it gets named.

1. Rules v2026.3

   Live since August 29, 2026

   Three corrections to what a filing costs, which form to file, and when the state reaches a felony on its own.

   1. A motion to seal a conviction carries the $65 processing fee of C.R.S. § 24-72-706(1)(h), waived if the court finds you indigent. We had been showing $224. That figure is the fee to open a civil case, and it applies only to a petition to seal an arrest with no charges filed, because there is no criminal case to file into. The correction came from Pamela Clifton at the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, who quoted the statute at us, and it was live within a day.
   2. The two non-conviction paths were carrying each other's forms. JDF 477, Motion to Seal Non-Conviction Records, is for a case that was dismissed or acquitted. JDF 417, Petition to Seal Arrest Records, is for an arrest where no charges were ever filed.
   3. The automatic clock on a felony now runs from the later of the final disposition and the release from supervision, as C.R.S. § 13-3-117(1)(a.5)(II) requires. We had been running it from the disposition alone, which showed some felony Automatic Dates years too early and understated the Gap. A civil infraction, a petty offense and a misdemeanor still run from the final disposition alone.

2. Rules v2026.2

   Live since August 25, 2026

   The first published Rules, and the first version of the Check that gave a dated answer.

   1. The four petition waiting periods of C.R.S. § 24-72-706 — one year for a civil infraction, two for a petty offense, three for a misdemeanor, five for a felony — each measured from the later of the final disposition of all counts and the release from supervision.
   2. The Clean Slate automatic waiting periods of C.R.S. § 13-3-117 — four years, seven years, seven years and ten years for the same four classes — and the arithmetic between the two that we call the Gap.
   3. The non-conviction and arrest-only paths of C.R.S. §§ 24-72-704 and 24-72-705, which carry no waiting period at all.

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