Child Custody Attorneys in Colorado Springs

Colorado law doesn’t use the word custody. It calls the question the allocation of parental responsibilities, and it divides it into two parts: parenting time, meaning when the child is with each parent, and decision-making responsibility, meaning who makes major decisions about school, health care, and religion. A case can be part of a divorce or stand on its own between parents who were never married.

The child’s best interests

The court decides both parts according to the child’s best interests, with the child’s safety as the paramount concern. It considers every relevant factor, including:

• what each parent wants,
• what the child wants, if mature enough to express a reasoned preference,
• the child’s relationships with each parent, siblings, and others,
• how the child is doing at home, at school, and in the community,
• the mental and physical health of everyone involved, though a disability alone is not a reason to limit parenting time, and
• each parent’s willingness to support the child’s relationship with the other.

A court can restrict a parent’s time only if it finds that parenting time would endanger the child’s physical health or significantly impair the child’s emotional development, and it must state the specific facts behind any restriction.

Allegations of abuse or domestic violence

When one parent claims the other has committed child abuse or neglect or domestic violence, the court must address that claim before it weighs the ordinary factors, and the claim has to be proved by a preponderance of the evidence. If the court finds domestic violence or child abuse, it generally can’t give the parents joint decision-making over the objection of the other parent.

These allegations are among the most serious in family law, whether you are raising one or answering one. A parallel criminal case or protection order changes the strategy in both cases. See protection orders.

Relocation

A parent who has the child most of the time and wants to move in a way that substantially changes the child’s ties to the other parent must give written notice as soon as practicable, with the new location, the reason for the move, and a proposed new parenting plan. The court decides whether the change is in the child’s best interests, considering factors specific to relocation, and it hears these cases with priority.

Changing an existing order

The standard depends on what you want to change. Adjusting a schedule is decided on the child’s best interests. Changing which parent the child lives with most of the time requires more: a change in circumstances since the last order, and a finding that the change is necessary for the child’s best interests.

Decision-making has its own limit. After one motion to change it, another can’t be filed for two years unless there is reason to believe the current order endangers the child’s physical health or significantly impairs their emotional development.

When more than one state is involved

Colorado generally decides custody for the first time only if it is the child’s home state: the child lived here with a parent for at least 182 consecutive days before the case was filed. Families who move often, including military families, can find that another state’s courts decide. See military divorce for how deployment affects parenting time.

How we handle custody cases

We build the case around the child: school records, the parenting history, the logistics of each home, and the witnesses who know the family. We help you propose a parenting plan the court can adopt, and we prepare to prove the facts behind it if the other parent won’t agree.