GLASTONBURY, CONNECTICUT · FAMILY LAW + FAMILY-VIOLENCE DEFENSE
The day a Connecticut divorce is filed and served, a set of court orders takes effect without anyone asking for them. Nobody argues about them and no judge signs them in your case. They simply apply.
They are in Practice Book §25-5, and the people who get into trouble over them are almost always people who did not know they existed.
They bind the filing spouse from the moment the complaint is signed, and the other spouse from the moment of service. They stay in place while the case is pending unless the court modifies them or the parties agree otherwise in writing.
Neither spouse may sell, transfer, encumber, conceal, or dispose of property — except in the ordinary course of business, for customary household expenses, or for reasonable attorney’s fees in the divorce.
Neither spouse may take on unreasonable debt.
Neither spouse may cancel or change life, automobile, homeowners, renters, medical, or dental coverage, or change the beneficiaries. Neither may remove the other from medical coverage.
Neither parent may permanently remove a minor child from Connecticut without written consent or a court order. This applies in cases involving children whether or not the parents were married.
A spouse who leaves the family home must notify the other in writing within 48 hours, providing contact information.
The early days of a separation are exactly when people feel the urge to act — move money somewhere safe, take a name off an account, cancel a policy, leave with the children for a while.
Most of that is prohibited, and doing it is punishable by contempt. Worse, it is the kind of thing a judge remembers for the rest of the case. A spouse who emptied an account in week one has a credibility problem in month ten that is very difficult to repair.
The orders cut both ways, which is their point. They preserve the situation so that decisions get made by a court with everything in front of it rather than by whichever spouse moved first.
Ordinary life continues. You pay your mortgage, buy groceries, run your business, pay your lawyer. The orders restrain unusual transactions, not normal ones.
If something genuinely needs to happen that the orders prohibit — a necessary sale, a refinance, a relocation — the route is agreement in writing or a motion to the court, not doing it and explaining afterward.
That is enforceable. The remedy is a motion, and the record of the violation is useful beyond the immediate issue.
When a Connecticut family court order is ignored — motions for contempt, income withholding, and what happens if you have been served with one.
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Connecticut removed its 90-day waiting period in 2023. What an uncontested divorce now involves, how long it takes, and what makes a case stop being uncontested.
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Connecticut divorce attorney Daniel M. Morton explains property division, alimony, and the process in the Hartford Judicial District. Glastonbury office.
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Every case starts with a conversation about what you’re facing and what it would take to handle it.
