Most people assume that filing for divorce starts a clock and not much else. You file, you wait, and eventually a judge tells you what you can and cannot do. That is not how it works in Collin County. The restrictions land the same day the petition is filed, and you are bound by them before you know the document exists. It’s called a standing order, and it is worth reading first.
What a standing order is
A standing order is an order the district judges issue in advance, on their own motion, that applies to every case of a certain type. Nobody requests it and there is no hearing. The Collin County version is the Standing Order on Children, Property and Conduct of Parties, signed October 17, 2025. It covers suits for dissolution of marriage and suits affecting the parent-child relationship, and you must attach a copy to your live pleading.
The timeline, which is shorter than people expect
The order takes effect when the original petition is filed. For fourteen days it operates as a temporary restraining order. If no party contests it by presenting evidence at a hearing on or before the fourteenth day, it continues as a temporary injunction until the court orders otherwise, and ends when the court signs a final order or dismisses the case. It starts immediately, and the window to contest it is two weeks.
The money restrictions
While the case is pending, and unless the court authorizes it, neither party may sell, transfer, mortgage, or encumber property. That covers separate property as well as community property, which surprises people who assumed their separate assets sat outside the case. It also prohibits:
- Incurring debt, other than legal expenses
- Withdrawing from any checking or savings account, or spending money in either party’s control
- Withdrawing or borrowing from a retirement, pension, IRA, or Keogh account, or against a life insurance policy’s cash value
- Entering a safe deposit box, or changing the beneficiary designation on any life insurance policy on either party or a child
- Cancelling or failing to pay premiums on insurance in place when the suit was filed
- Reducing federal income tax withholding from either party’s wages
The ones nobody expects
Much of this order is about conduct and records rather than money, and that is the part that catches careful people.
You may not open the other party’s mail or email, or sign their name on a check or a tax refund. You may not use a password or PIN to get into their email, bank, or social media accounts, even if you have known that password for fifteen years and they never changed it.
You may not destroy or alter financial records, tax returns, cancelled checks, or deposit slips. The same goes for email, text messages, and other electronically stored information relevant to the case, on a phone or in cloud storage, down to its metadata. You may not delete content from any social network profile used by either party or a child.
You also may not track the other party’s property or vehicle without their consent. The order names both methods: a tracking application on a device in their possession, and following them or having someone else do it.
People forget the shared family phone plan in this conversation, every single time.
What the order does not prohibit
That list reads as though you cannot buy groceries, so this is the part I most often say out loud. The order expressly does not do three things. It does not exclude a party from occupying their own residence. It does not prohibit spending on reasonable and necessary living expenses or attorney’s fees. And it does not prohibit acts reasonable and necessary to conduct that party’s usual business and occupation.
That third carve-out does a lot of work for anyone who owns a company. Payroll, vendor payments, and ordinary operating decisions are not frozen. What counts as usual gets complicated when the business is also a marital asset being valued, which is one reason we keep civil and business counsel in house.
The provisions about the children
During an original suit, and without the written agreement of both parties or an order from the presiding judge, neither parent may remove a child from Texas to change the child’s residence, withdraw a child from the school or day care where the child is enrolled, or change the child’s place of abode. Neither may hide a child from the other or disturb the peace of a child.
The order also warns that discussing certain things with a child, or where a child can hear, may result in an adverse ruling: disparaging remarks about the other parent, and aspects of the litigation that do not involve the child, including testimony, evidence, and discovery. Brief practical conversation is fine. Where the standing order conflicts with a protective order, the protective order controls.
The 30 day deadline attached to it
This one is easy to miss. Within 30 days of a parent’s appearance, and before any temporary orders hearing, each parent has to produce:
- Information sufficient to identify that parent’s net resources and ability to pay child support
- Income tax returns for the past two years, a financial statement, and current pay stubs
- For each child’s health and dental insurance: the carrier, the policy number, a copy of the policy and schedule of benefits, the membership card, and proof of the cost of the child’s portion of the premiums
Whichever comes first sets your real deadline, and those hearings are often set well inside 30 days. Gathering these documents the week you file, rather than the week of the hearing, is the most useful thing you can do for yourself. Our divorce attorneys in Frisco put this list in front of clients at the first meeting.
If you are already a week in and have half of it, come anyway. We would rather work from what you have than wait for a complete file.