Parenting Time (Visitation)

Parenting Time used to be called visitation in Colorado. If there is disagreement about parenting time issues, you may have to ask the court to enforce or modify parenting time agreements.

Visitation plans are legal arrangements. If one or both parents would like to change their visitation arrangement, you can ask the court to modify your original agreement. If one parent violates the terms, the other parent can ask the court to enforce them.

Building a parenting plan in Colorado

Building a parenting plan for Colorado-required parenting plan spells out where your children will live, their education and activities, how future decisions will be made and more.

In Colorado, Parental Responsibilities include decision-making and parenting time, once called custody. You will need several forms if you ask the court to allocate Parental Responsibility.

Generally speaking, parenting time refers to the time the parent spends with his or her child. It is a very basic assumption that a child greatly needs the love, care, and support of both parents. This has to be properly maintained even in the event of a divorce, legal separation, annulment, or other forms of marriage breakdown wherein his or her parents are not anymore living with each other.

Since parenting time is of utmost importance to be considered in marriage breakdowns, both parents should be able to come up with parenting time agreements. This is to primarily ensure that both parents continue to foster a strong and affectionate relationship with their child notwithstanding the existing disagreements of both parents that led to the breakdown.

If both parents smoothly come into a proper and reasonable parenting time agreement on their own, the court would normally endorse their parenting agreement quite easily. However, if both parents cannot agree on a parenting time schedule on their own, the court would intervene and issue an order specifying the exact schedule to be followed especially with the non-custodial parent.

The court’s decision to grant parenting time will always be according to the best interests of the child. In the event of a divorce, for instance, the court would provide a divorce parenting time only after properly establishing with clear reasons that the child’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being is not in any way put in danger.

The time economy of parenting always suggests the idea that the child should have a well-balanced upbringing that creates a strong and affectionate connection not just to one parent only but to both. However, on top of everything is the foremost importance given to the child’s well-being. It is therefore possible that the court would not provide the other parent any parenting time right if it is clearly not for the best interests of the child.

Referral Legal Forms in Colorado

Parenting Plan in Colorado
A written parenting plan is required in divorces where there are minor children.

Temporary Orders in Colorado
(Revision Date: 6/1/2004)

Colorado Child Support Forms
(Revision Date: 1/1/2011)

Child Support Obligations
(Revision Date: 1/1/2011)