Colorado Child Support and Custody Laws - Parental Responsibilities

The Colorado Legislature recently changed the language of most state statutes that once referred to child “custody”. The new terminology is “allocation of parental responsibility” or “allocation of decision-making responsibility”. The change is more than superficial. The primary reason for the modification was to reduce the tendency of parents in a “custody” dispute to look at custody as a property right, i.e. to treat their children as objects to be fought over.

The focus of the new language is on the decisions that must be made regarding the raising of children, and how the parents will either cooperate in those decisions or divide them between the parents. The new language in Colorado encourages parents to portion decision-making responsibilities into discrete areas, such as education, religion or health, and either share responsibilities in each of the areas they identify or assign responsibility for specific decision-making areas to one or the other parent.

The new terminology also makes clearer the difference between what were once two kinds of child "custody”, ” legal” child custody and “residential” child custody. Legal custody referred to which parent made decisions regarding the children and residential custody referred to where the children lived and the visitation rights of the “non-custodial” parent. Residential child custody or visitation is now referred to as “parenting time.” So, when divorcing parents think about “custody,” they should think in terms of (1) who will make the decisions (allocation of parental responsibilities), and (2) parenting time, or with whom the children will live primarily and the other parent’s schedule for spending time with the children.

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