Fort Collins Child Custody Lawyers

Nothing in family law frightens people the way a dispute over children does. Property can be replaced and support can be recalculated. Time with your kids cannot be refunded. If you are reading this at eleven at night trying to figure out whether you are about to lose something, the first useful thing to know is that Colorado starts from the position that children benefit from meaningful relationships with both parents.

We have handled parenting disputes in Fort Collins since 1981. Our office is at 110 E Oak Street in Old Town, a short walk from the Larimer County Justice Center at 201 La Porte Avenue, where your case will be heard.

Colorado Does Not Use the Word "Custody"

The statutes replaced custody with allocation of parental responsibilities, and that is not just a vocabulary change. The court makes two separate decisions, and they do not have to line up:

• Parenting time: the actual schedule -- which nights the child is at which house, how holidays and school breaks rotate, and how exchanges happen. This is what most people mean by physical custody.
• Decision-making responsibility: the authority to make major decisions about education, non-emergency medical care, and religious upbringing. This is what most people mean by legal custody.

One parent can have the majority of overnights while both parents share joint decision-making. Decision-making can be split by category, so that one parent decides on schooling and both decide on healthcare. Understanding that these are two separate levers is often what makes a settlement possible, because parents who thought they wanted the same thing frequently want different things.

How Larimer County Courts Actually Decide

Colorado courts apply the best-interests-of-the-child standard set out in C.R.S. § 14-10-124. There is no formula and no presumption in favor of either parent. The statutory factors include:

• * The wishes of the parents, and of the child if mature enough to express a reasoned preference
• * The child's relationship with each parent, siblings, and other significant people
• * The child's adjustment to home, school, and community
• * The mental and physical health of everyone involved
• * Each parent's ability to place the child's needs ahead of their own
• * Each parent's willingness to encourage a relationship with the other parent
• * The physical proximity of the two homes as it relates to a practical schedule
• * Any history of domestic violence, child abuse, or neglect

In practice, two of these carry more weight than parents expect. The first is the past caretaking record: who took the child to the pediatrician, who knows the teacher's name, who handles the daily logistics. The second is the willingness to support the other parent's relationship. Judges notice which parent can speak neutrally about the other, and they notice which one cannot.

Custody Issues We Handle

How a Parenting Case Moves Through Larimer County Court

Whether your case arrives as part of a divorce or as a standalone petition between unmarried parents, the path looks broadly the same.

What Belongs in a Parenting Plan

The plans that fail are the vague ones. A plan that says the parents will share holidays reasonably guarantees an argument every November. A durable Colorado parenting plan spells out the regular weekly schedule, a holiday and school break rotation with specific start and end times, summer arrangements, exchange locations, how travel and out-of-state trips are handled, how the parents communicate and how quickly they respond, who holds the passport, and what happens when a parent needs to swap a weekend.

Detail is not hostility. Detail is what allows two people who no longer trust each other to co-parent without needing to negotiate every week. Where support is also at issue, remember that the overnight count in your plan feeds directly into the child support calculation, and that support generally continues until a child is nineteen, with exceptions.

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