Colorado Child Support Laws

An uncontested divorce is the best kind of divorce, to be honest with you. It means that there’s nothing that you’re fighting over, that you have to court for, and have a judge make a determination on. In other words, you’ve gone through your divorce process, but you and your spouse have been able to reach agreement on all of the important factors in your divorce. That includes your parenting plan, all of the issues surrounding how you’re going to deal with the children, all of the issues surrounding child support, maintenance, if that’s important in the case. And you’re able then to go to court with your final agreements and the judge essentially is going to just agree to what you’ve agreed to, unless there is something completely onerous or wrong with it.

In most cases, the judge will rubber stamp what you’ve agreed to. You may or may not have to go in and see the judge for a final hearing, that depends on whether or not you have attorneys, and whether there are child issues involved. But in most cases you’ll be able to avoid going to court altogether and your divorce agreement will become an order of the court just as written. And that would be an uncontested divorce. A contested divorce means that there’s something that you’re going to have to have the judge decide, and you’re going to have to go to court to have the judge decide that. And that the distinction between the two.

By: Leslie Matthews

In the State of Colorado, child support can be modified when there’s a substantial and continuing change in circumstances. The first thing that is looked to is whether or not the amount of child support that’s currently being paid will change by greater than 10%. If somebody for example is paying $500 a month and they’re trying to reduce their child support, then their burden would be to show that the child support would go down by $50. And of course on the other hand, if the person who’s receiving child support is trying to increase the amount of child support that’s being paid at the end of the day. Then they would have to show that, that amount would go up by $50 for a $500 amount example.

As far as terminating child support, generally speaking, child support will terminate once the child turns the age of 19. However, if you have multiple children, at that time you should look at modifying your child support as well. Because once the first child turns 19, it does not automatically recalculate itself for when that particular event happens, and then base itself off of the remaining children. So you should file a motion to modify child support at that time.

Some other issues that you look at when modifying child support is the date at which child support would be modified back to. Generally speaking, child support is modified back to the date that you filed your motion to modify child support. However, if you can show that there was a mutually agreed upon exchange in parenting. Meaning, maybe you had a child for four overnights a week and now for the past year or two or whatever it is, that child has been living primarily with the other parent. You can go into the court and argue that there was a mutually agreed upon exchange. And so from the date that, that child started to live with you or the other parent, the modification should go back to that date. Which could be a lot earlier in time than the date in which you file your motion.

By: Scott Goldman

What is alimony based on in Colorado? Alimony, we actually don’t use that word here in Colorado. It’s the same thing, but we use the word maintenance. The reason we use the word maintenance is because it’s need-based here in Colorado. It’s not as if you just should have maintenance/alimony because someone’s at fault or someone’s been bad and they need to be punished.

Here in Colorado, regardless of how bad the other party is, you’re not going to be able to get alimony or maintenance unless you fulfill on what we now have as a formula or such. So here in Colorado, we have a formula. It went into effect at the beginning of 2014. It is a new formula. It doesn’t go into effect unless you’ve had at least three years of marriage.  If you are under three years of marriage, then the formula doesn’t apply. You might be able to get short term, temporary maintenance/alimony to tide you over until you get a job. But the formula itself won’t come into effect unless you’ve married a relatively significant period of time – three years. Once you hit that three year mark, the formula comes into effect and, whereas historically, we used to argue about maintenance all the time, now there’s less argument about it because judges like formulas.

Formulas make things easier. The maintenance formula itself has some complexities to it that are beyond this video, however suffice it to say, a thumbnail if you wanted to use it would be that the spouse that needed maintenance would probably get 40% of the other spouse’s salary minus – I don’t know if you can stick with it – minus 50% of the salary that the spouse who has less income already makes, and then the only question at that point is the period of time that you’d get the maintenance. It’s between a third of your marriage to half of your marriage, depending on how long you’ve been married. So the longer you’ve been married, the closer you’re going to get to the halfway point for the number of years that you would get maintenance.

For instance, if you’ve been married for (20) years, you’ll probably get maintenance for (10) years. And if you are a stay at home mother, let’s say, and you haven’t worked in years and years and years and you’re in your 50s, chances are you’ll get 40% of your spouses salary for that ten years. Now you can’t– I’m not promising that’s exactly right because like I said, there are many complexities to the statute and you’d have to come in a really sit down with me and really look for me to come up with what that maintenance formula will look like. So don’t take it as gospel. I’m just saying, that’s kind of a thumbnail sketch of how we do maintenance currently here in Colorado.

By: Leslie Matthews

When you get divorced, you have a number of pieces of paper that need to be sent in to the court. A divorce decree is all of that final paperwork put together that’s made an order of the court. So, that final paperwork would include your parenting plan, it would include your separation agreement, it would include any other orders of the court, and that package, all put together, is your divorce decree.

Now what you can do once you have your divorce decree is you can enforce it, so it becomes as I said an order of the court, meaning that if somebody doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do based on that paperwork, you can go to the court with a contempt motion or an order to enforce and it actually is a court order. So when you’re at the end of the divorce you have a divorce decree, you have your legal rights essentially handled.

By: Leslie Matthews

What is child custody based on in Colorado? Child custody is based on a standard – a legal standard – called “What is in the best interest of the children“? And Child custody includes two pieces. It includes parenting time and it includes decision-making. And also, of course, there’s child support that needs to be dealt with. So how is that determined? Essentially, you’ll either agree to those things, in other words, you’ll have the children, let’s just say, 50% of the time – 50% of the overnights a year. Your ex-spouse will also have the children 50% of the time, or 50% of the overnights for the year.

Or certainly we have clients where they take a stand that for reasons of stability or reasons where someone has a job that requires them to travel all the time, that they have less child custody. So the parenting time might most of the time with one parent – the primary parent – and then the other parent might have every other weekend per se with the children. Child custody is either going to be determined, like I said, by you and your spouse or it’s going to be determined by the court if you can’t come to an agreement on that. The court is going to look at what’s in the best interest of the children. The court’s not – I know this is hard – but the court’s not interested at all in you or your spouse. They’re not. That’s not their charge. Their charge is what’s in the best interest of the children.

So it behooves you when you’re sitting down and maybe talking about a child custody issue in the case of a divorce, what is in the best interest of the children in terms of parenting time? What is in the best interest of the children in terms of decision-making? In other words, should decisions all be made by both of you together – joint decision making – or are there some decisions that one or the other of you should make because you can see down the line that there may be real problems associated with trying to come to agreement.

Mostly I see this in the area of wanting the children to go to therapy. One parent believes in therapy, the other parent doesn’t. Or medical issues. We’ve seen children with attention deficit syndrome. One parent believes in medication, the other parent doesn’t. So you can see down the line that there might be issues regarding decision-making.

One of the exceptions to joint decision-making that the court will impose has to do with domestic abuse. If there is domestic abuse in your relationship, then the court will not allow joint decision-making because there’s an imbalance of power between the two parties.  So you can see, there’s some complexities here. But the decision the court will make will always be based on that standard – the best interest of the children – and it will be the judge’s opinion about what’s in the best interest of the children.

So if you can’t come to an agreement, you’re essentially handing that, let’s just say subjective decision to someone else, and hopefully the judge will make a good decision on that for you if you can’t do that yourselves.

By: Leslie Matthews

Child support is often one of the biggest issues in a divorce. Child support is determined after there is an initial determination of whether or not there should be maintenance, because maintenance becomes income to the party receiving child support and it actually reduces the income of the party paying child support. Then there is a statutory calculation made for child support when there is things that you plug into the calculation, like is one of the parties paying health insurance? Is one of the parties paying daycare, either because they’re going to school or because they’re working? And those things all factor into the child support amount.

Child support can sometimes be calculated by individuals on their own without the help of an attorney, but if you have daycare issues or you have one of the parties going to school, or you have one of the parties paying medical, typically you’d be better off with an attorney assisting you. And we work very hard when we’re helping with people to make sure that that child support calculation is done correctly.

By: Ray Chamberland