Denver Child Custody Lawyer

Denver, CO Child Custody & Allocation of Parental Responsibility Attorney

Many parents prioritize their children’s safety and happiness above all else. Fortunately, the law does too. If you are separating from your child’s other parent, it’s important to know your options as well as the priorities of the judicial system.

Child custody & allocation of parental responsibility agreements are very serious. The legal system uses a significant amount of effort to create and enforce them, so it’s important that you view the process with the appropriate mindset. It’s also important to understand what’s at stake for your family if you’re moving into an allocation of parental responsibility arrangement.

Having an experienced family law attorney on your side is key to ensuring that you can spend time with your children. Without an attorney, you risk losing access to your kids or putting them into a situation that would be detrimental to their health. The court can’t understand the whole picture unless you have an attorney to represent you.

Kinnett & Cordes: Your Denver Child Custody & Allocation of Parental Responsibility Attorney

Here at Kinnett & Cordes, we prioritize families. We practice only family law to give our clients more reliable and comprehensive access to family law experts. Our experience in this field makes us renowned in the Denver area. We have a strong record of winning cases for our clients and ensuring that the children in their families are safe, happy, and well cared for.

By focusing only on family law, we can give you the niche expertise that you need for your child custody and parenting time case. No other area firm can provide the level of reliable legal counsel that our team at Kinnett & Cordes can.

What Are Child Custody and Parenting Time Arrangements?

The law states that both of a child’s parents should contribute to the child’s upbringing and care. When parents are married or live together, this is often the natural order of things. However, if a child’s parents are divorced, separated, or not involved with one another, equal contribution becomes more difficult.

Child custody and parenting time arrangements outline the amount of time that each parent will care for their child. These agreements vary greatly depending on the circumstances of the family at hand.

Because these arrangements are legally binding, parents can better enforce them. If one parent is supposed to care for a child and regularly doesn’t do so, the custodial parent can bring them to court to fix the issue. These agreements hold both parents accountable and ensure that parents are contributing to their child’s well-being.

Child Custody Arrangements

Child custody arrangements deal with a child’s living situation. Though parents may not have the children with them all of the time, they have a regular and ongoing responsibility to provide safe and healthy long-term housing when the children are in their care.

Parenting time can be arranged several ways to meet your family’s unique circumstances. This is easier to achieve when both parents can agree and create a schedule outside of court. Otherwise, a judge will decide the schedule and it likely will not be as tailored to your situation as you might like. Some common schedules include one week with one parent and one week with the other, weekdays with one parent and weekends, etc.

Decision-Making

As a part of the allocation of parental responsibilities process, decision-making for your children will also be decided upon. Decision-making is distinct from the parenting time schedule. Typically, decision-making refers to the major decisions parents make for their children with respect to medical, educational, religious, and extracurricular decisions.

In general, decision-making does not relate to day-to-day decision-making. Typically, day-to-day decision-making is left to the party that has the children.

Generally, even if one parent has majority time, decision-making is awarded to both parents unless the Court finds that awarding one parent decision-making will be determinantal to the child’s upbringing and wellbeing. If parents are unwilling or unable to work with the other parent on decisions for the child, the Court may award decision-making authority to one parent over the other. The standard for the initial determination of decision-making responsibility is “best interests of the child.”

Parenting Time

In some scenarios, a parent is not fit to care for their children. This can happen for many reasons, including:

• Untreated drug or alcohol abuse
• Unstable housing
• Inability to appropriately care for the child
• Domestic violence

These scenarios may simply indicate that one parent is not capable of properly maintaining ongoing custody at the present time and are not necessarily qualifying judgments on the love or devotion of the parent to the child.

Modifications

It’s important to understand that modifications can be made to your allocation of parental responsibility order; they do not need to be permanent. If something significant changes, the court or the other parent may agree to make changes to your parenting arrangements. For example, if a parent is seeking to move to a new state, they may seek modification.

Contact Kinnett & Cordes

Our firm has decades of combined experience in the family law sector. We are poised to help your family create a new arrangement that works for all involved while supporting the health and wellness of your children. Though the process may be difficult, many families find peace in the end result.

For more information on how we can help you, contact us online today.