In Colorado, custody is not given to one parent over the other. Rather, it is up to the courts to decide how best to divide custody between both parents. The courts will look at things like the child’s age, the proximity of parents’ residences, and which parent has been more involved in raising the child before making their decision on who gets full custody.

Child support is for both parties’ benefit and is legally enforceable with a court order or agreement signed by both parties. The most common way that child support payments are determined is by using “combined parental gross income” and then dividing that number by each party’s custody percentage. Use our Colorado child support calculator to get an idea of what your child support payments might look like.

In Colorado, parents are granted joint legal custody of their children until the court finds good cause not to grant it. This means both parents will have rights and responsibilities with regard to their children. The court will also determine the amount of child support, based on the non-custodial parent’s income and other circumstances. A custodial parent may request supervised visitation for a time period of up to one year in order to protect them and their children from any harm that may occur. A family law attorney can help you with this process and ensure that your visitation arrangement is reasonable and meets the needs of both the custodial and non-custodial parents.

The dissolution of a marriage in Colorado is governed by the Colorado Revised Uniform Limited Partnership Act. The law specifies that there are grounds for divorce, which are listed in the statute. Divorce can be granted on grounds of irreconcilable differences, abandonment, mental incapacity, or conviction of a felony. Spouses can also seek to end their marriage through annulment.

An annulment occurs when one party seeks to end the marriage because the other party never had the legal capacity to enter into it in the first place. For example, if one spouse is below 18 years old they cannot get married in Colorado without obtaining consent from a parent or guardian. Annulment is not possible if you have been married for more than 180 days unless it can be proven that fraud occurred when entering into the marriage contract.

A divorce decree may include provisions for child custody and visitation rights, spousal maintenance (alimony), child support payments, and division of property and debt acquired during the marriage. A court may determine that child custody will be shared equally between spouses with no preference given to either one as long as it is determined that such custody arrangement would be best for the children involved.

In Colorado, parents have the opportunity to work together and reach a parenting plan that will best suit them and their family. With this, parents can decide who will be the child’s primary caretaker, designate the decision-making process for major parental decisions such as education and health care, set out each parent’s parenting time and how disputes will be resolved.

Colorado law also allows for the possibility of joint child custody with both parties sharing physical and legal custody of the children. Joint custody is typically shared at less than 50/50 time with one party designated as the primary caretaker while one party has more time allocated for other activities such as education or employment.

Colorado law also recognizes that it may not always be in a child’s best interest to split up siblings if it creates a hardship on either party. For that reason, siblings can live together in some situations such as when they are close in age or ideally live near each other.