Colorado Custody Forms & Panic‑Search Guides

Key cases

• In re Marriage of Aldrich, 945 P.2d 1370 (Colo. 1997)

  A parent seeking to modify child support must prove a substantial and continuing change in circumstances producing at least a ten-percent change; a claimed income drop can be rejected where bank deposits and lifestyle contradict it, and the court need not raise modification theories the moving parent did not.

• In re Marriage of Chalat, 112 P.3d 47 (Colo. 2005)

  A child-support obligation incorporated into the divorce decree — including an agreed obligation to pay postsecondary (college) expenses — may be modified only on a showing of substantial and continuing changed circumstances; the court keeps continuing jurisdiction, and the child-support guidelines do not by themselves reopen the order.

• In re Marriage of Evans, 504 P.3d 988 (Colo. App. 2021)

  Where a parent concealed income or an asset during the divorce, the court may reopen the matter under C.R.C.P. 16.2(e)(10) and recalculate child support on the parents’ true combined income; nondisclosure does not shield a higher earner from an accurate obligation.

• In re the Marriage of Ciesluk, 113 P.3d 135 (Colo. 2005)

  On a motion to relocate with a child, neither parent carries a presumption: C.R.S. § 14-10-129 (as amended) eliminates the Francis presumption favoring the majority-time parent, so both parents share equally the burden of showing what is in the child’s best interests under the § 14-10-129(2)(c) factors.

• People ex rel. J.R.T. v. Martinez, 70 P.3d 474 (Colo. 2003)

  When deciding whether to impute income to an allegedly underemployed parent under C.R.S. § 14-10-115, the court first asks whether the parent is shirking a child-support obligation by unreasonably foregoing higher-paying work; merely being fired is not automatically “voluntary underemployment” — the court weighs the reasonableness of the parent’s efforts to find comparable work.

• Spahmer v. Gullette, 113 P.3d 158 (Colo. 2005)

  In an initial allocation of parental responsibilities under C.R.S. § 14-10-124(1.5), a court has no authority to order a parent to live in a particular location; it must accept where each parent intends to live and allocate parental responsibilities in the child’s best interests.