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# Colorado Doesn't Say "Custody": Parenting Time and Decision-Making
- URL: https://blog.denverdivorce.com/parenting-time-decision-making-colorado/
- Published: 2026-09-13T21:58:11.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-19T05:32:35.000Z
- Description: Colorado replaced custody with the allocation of parental responsibilities, split into parenting time and decision-making. How each half works, joint versus sole decisions by category and who breaks a tie, why the majority-time label matters, the factors in plain English, and how orders change.
- Author: Aaron Herzberg
- Tags: Children

Ask a Colorado judge for "custody" and you will be gently corrected. Since 1999 the statute has used a different vocabulary: the court allocates parental responsibilities, and those responsibilities come in two halves. Parenting time is the schedule, where the child sleeps and who handles the daily care. Decision-making responsibility is the authority over the major choices in a child's life. The two are allocated separately, and a parent can have equal time with little decision-making authority or a minority of the time with joint authority over everything.

The vocabulary matters because the forms, the orders, and the standards for changing them are all keyed to it. A parent who understands the two halves negotiates a better plan and reads the order the court signs.

## The Two Halves

Parenting time covers the physical schedule and the ordinary decisions that come with it: bedtimes, meals, homework, discipline, which friend can come over. Each parent makes those decisions during that parent's time without consulting the other.

Decision-making responsibility covers what C.R.S. § 14-10-130(1) calls the child's "upbringing, including his or her education, health care, and religious training." Colorado plans typically break it into four categories: education, non-emergency medical and mental health care, religion, and extracurricular activities. Under § 14-10-124(1.5)(b) the court may allocate each category "mutually between both parties," "individually to one or the other party," or "any combination thereof." Whoever holds the authority "may determine the child's upbringing" in that category unless the court, on motion, finds that the exercise of the authority endangers the child.

Two things do not depend on the allocation. Under § 14-10-123.8, a parent allocated any parental responsibility cannot be denied access to the child's medical, dental, and school records absent good cause. And under § 14-10-124(6), either parent may obtain emergency medical treatment for the child without violating a decision-making order.

![Denver's Civic Center from the steps of the State Capitol](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9c/7f/9c7f0f22-0ab1-4be3-88a9-68ce015e9524/content/images/2026/09/parenting-time-decision-making-colorado.jpg)

Denver's Civic Center from the steps of the State Capitol. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (public domain).

## Joint Versus Sole by Category, and Who Breaks a Tie

Most Front Range orders allocate joint decision-making on all four categories, because the statute's declaration favors shared parenting and because joint authority keeps both parents in the child's life. Sole authority on one category is common where one parent has expertise or a history of handling it, where the parents have a proven inability to cooperate on that subject, or where the court finds abuse or domestic violence. In that last case § 14-10-124(4)(a) provides that joint decision-making shall not be ordered over the objection of the other parent or the child's legal representative, absent credible evidence the parents can decide safely together, and a parenting coordinator may not be appointed just to make joint authority work.

Joint authority fails when the parents deadlock, so a good plan says what happens then. The common tools:

- A consultation clause with a final-say provision. The parents must confer in good faith, and if they cannot agree within a set period, one parent decides that category. This keeps the order "joint" while preventing paralysis.
- Mediation, then a decision-maker or arbitrator under § 14-10-128.3 or § 14-10-128.5, which this blog covers in its post on parenting coordinators and decision-makers.
- The court. The Court of Appeals confirmed in *In re Marriage of Thomas* (2021) and again in *In re E.E.L-T.* (2024), a vaccine dispute, that a judge can break a deadlock between joint decision-makers on a single issue without modifying the allocation and without any finding of endangerment. What the court will not do, under *Griffin v. Griffin* (1985), is enforce an agreement that merely requires the parents to "agree."

## The Majority-Time Parent and Why the Label Matters

Colorado orders rarely name a "primary" parent, but the statute repeatedly refers to "the party with whom the child resides a majority of the time," and that status carries consequences.

- Relocation. A majority-time parent who wants to move in a way that substantially changes the child's geographic ties must give written notice under § 14-10-129(1)(a)(II), and the move is judged under the relocation factors. A parent with equal time faces the same factors but from a different starting point.
- Modification standard. Changing which parent has majority time after the decree requires an endangerment finding under § 14-10-129(2) unless the parents agree, the child has been integrated into the other home with consent, or a relocation is at issue. In a true 50/50 plan there is no majority parent, and changes are judged on best interests alone.
- School enrollment. Districts enroll by residence. The plan should name the address used for school, or the parents will litigate it in August.
- Child support. Under the guideline that applies to orders entered or modified on or after March 1, 2026, every overnight earns credit on a parenting-time table, so the count of overnights drives the number more than the label does. The tax dependency exemption is now allocated in the court's discretion under statutory factors.

## The Best-Interests Factors in Plain English

Section 14-10-124(1.5)(a) directs the court to give "paramount consideration" to the child's safety and to weigh all relevant factors, including:

- What each parent wants, and what the child wants if the child is mature enough to express a reasoned, independent preference.
- The child's relationships with each parent, siblings, and anyone else who significantly affects the child.
- Any domestic-violence report from a CFI, PRE, or child's legal representative, and other evidence of violence.
- The child's adjustment to home, school, and community.
- The mental and physical health of everyone involved, with disability alone never a basis to limit time.
- Each parent's ability to encourage the child's love for and contact with the other parent, excepting a parent who is acting to protect the child from abuse or violence.
- Whether the parents' past involvement reflects "a system of values, time commitment, and mutual support."
- How close the parents live to each other.
- Each parent's ability to put the child's needs ahead of his or her own.

For decision-making the court adds credible evidence of the parents' ability to cooperate, whether their past involvement shows they can decide jointly, and whether joint authority will promote contact with both parents. Three rules frame the list: no presumption based on a parent's sex; no presumption of equal time, a point the legislature reaffirmed when it postponed SB26-027 indefinitely in February 2026; and no consideration of conduct that does not affect the parent's relationship with the child.

## The Parenting Plan

Under § 14-10-124(7) each parent may submit a proposed parenting plan, and if neither is approved the court writes its own. In contested cases the plan "must be as specific as possible": the type of decision-making for each category, a practical schedule including holidays and school breaks, where and how exchanges happen and who drives, how the parents communicate with each other, and how each parent stays in contact with the child during the other's time. The court may order mediation to build the plan and divide its cost. A later post on this blog walks through the plan clause by clause.

## How Orders Change Later

Parenting time can be modified whenever the change serves the child's best interests, with two exceptions that carry the endangerment standard: moving the child's majority-time home, and restricting a parent's time through supervision or similar controls. The Colorado Supreme Court held in *In re Marriage of Dale* (2026 CO 35) that a purely quantitative reduction is a modification, not a restriction, unless it eliminates time altogether. Decision-making changes under § 14-10-131 require endangerment or one of the consent-based exceptions, and a two-year waiting period applies to repeat motions. This blog's post on the two modification standards covers the details.

## Talk to a Denver Divorce Attorney About Parenting Time and Decision-Making

Aaron Herzberg is a divorce attorney in Greenwood Village, Colorado, serving Denver and the Front Range, with more than 30 years of trial experience and a practice focused on divorce, custody, and financially complex family law. The allocation entered at permanent orders sets the standard for every dispute that follows, which is why the first plan deserves more care than any later motion. A first meeting is a paid consultation, not a free call and not a sales pitch.

Read the full guides on DenverDivorce.com: [Parental Responsibilities (Custody) in Colorado](https://denverdivorce.com/practice-areas/parental-responsibilities.html?ref=blog.denverdivorce.com) and [Colorado Custody Terms Explained](https://denverdivorce.com/practice-areas/custody-terms.html?ref=blog.denverdivorce.com).

*Educational information only, not legal advice. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.*