Missed or Modified Parenting Time

Before we begin: Everything here is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. For advice about your specific situation, consult a licensed Colorado attorney.

Your Situation

Parenting time problems come in a few shapes. Maybe the other parent keeps missing their scheduled time, or returns the kids late, or refuses to hand them over when it's your turn. Maybe the two of you have been quietly running a different schedule than the one the court ordered. Or maybe your life has changed and the existing schedule simply doesn't work anymore, so you're thinking about asking the court to change it formally. Each of these is a distinct legal path, and the one you're on determines what you have to prove and what the court can do for you.

This matters because the court order — not your informal understanding with the other parent — is what's legally enforceable. Verbal changes to a parenting schedule generally are not honored by the court, even if both of you agreed to them at the time. That creates real risk: if you've been deviating from the order and a dispute erupts, the written order is still what controls.

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This guide will help you tell the difference between enforcing the existing order, modifying it, and restricting the other parent's time — because the law treats those three things very differently.

What the Law Requires

Colorado law starts from a strong policy: unless a parent endangers the child, the state favors frequent and continuing contact between a child and both parents. That policy shapes nearly everything the court can do.

Changing the schedule. The law lets a court modify parenting time whenever doing so serves the child's best interests. That's a flexible standard. But there's a catch — if what you're really asking for is to restrict the other parent's time or to change which parent the child lives with most of the time, a much higher bar applies.

Restricting someone's time. Colorado law says a court cannot restrict or reduce a parent's time unless it finds that the parenting time would endanger the child's physical health or significantly impair the child's emotional development. A court imposing such a restriction has to spell out the specific facts supporting it. Importantly, a substantial reduction in parenting time, by itself, is not automatically treated as a "restriction" — and a parent asking for more time does not have to prove the child's current situation is harmful.

Emergency restrictions. If a child is in imminent danger, a parent can file a verified emergency motion to restrict the other parent's time. The law treats this as urgent: the court must hear and rule on it within 14 days of filing. While that motion is pending, the restricted parent's time must be supervised. If no hearing happens within 14 days, the supervised restriction ends. Be careful here — "danger" means a real, serious level of peril, not just a risk of something negative, and filing a motion the court finds frivolous or groundless carries a mandatory award of attorney fees and costs against you.

Enforcing an existing order. If the other parent isn't complying, either parent can file a verified motion describing the noncompliance and the sanctions sought. The court reviews it within 35 days. If the motion's allegations are inadequate, the court will deny it — and may order you to pay the other side's fees.

Make-up time. When a parent is wrongly denied court-ordered time, the court can order make-up parenting time of the same type and duration as what was missed — weekend for weekend, holiday for holiday, summer for summer. It generally must happen within six months, or within one year if a specific period (like a particular holiday) can't be replicated sooner, at a time and in a manner the wronged parent chooses, if that serves the child's best interests.

A few important limits. Support and parenting time are independent — if the other parent stops paying support, that does not excuse you from following the parenting schedule, and vice versa. A parent's absence from the home because of domestic violence cannot be held against them when the court weighs the child's best interests. And a tort claim (for example, for interference with the parent-child relationship) has to be filed in a separate lawsuit, not inside your dissolution case.

What Courts Typically Do

In practice, Colorado judges lean heavily toward preserving contact with both parents. Appellate courts have repeatedly reversed trial judges who slashed a fit parent's time — cutting it to a week per year, or a couple of days a month, or only holidays — without evidence that the reduction actually benefited the children. The lesson: a court that wants to reduce someone's time usually has to explain how the child is better off, not just penalize a parent.

Courts also resist using a change of custody as punishment. In practice, even conduct like hiding the children to block visits, standing alone, hasn't been enough to flip custody — the court still looks for a genuine change in circumstances and a benefit to the child.

When a court does restrict time, it's expected to choose the least detrimental alternative and to consider steps short of cutting off contact — supervised time (which can be provided by a professional or, in lighter cases, a trusted family member or friend), monitored time, therapeutic parenting, or appointing a decision-maker. A court cannot hand one parent the power to decide whether the other gets to see the child at all.

The best-interest factors a judge weighs include the child's wishes (if mature enough), the child's relationships and adjustment to home and school, everyone's mental and physical health, and — notably — each parent's willingness to support the child's relationship with the other parent.

For enforcement, judges can reach for a real toolbox: make-up time, additional conditions on parenting time, a bond or security to guarantee future compliance, modification of the order, contempt (with possible fines or jail), and civil fines up to $100 per incident of noncompliance. The prevailing party can also be awarded attorney fees, costs, and expenses — courts have read "expenses" broadly enough to include lost wages a denied parent suffered. One limit worth knowing: remedial contempt sanctions generally won't be imposed for a one-time violation the parent can no longer undo, because remedial contempt requires a present ability to comply.

Step by Step: What to Do

1. Pull out your current order and read it carefully. Confirm exactly what the schedule requires, and check whether your order requires mediation before you can file a motion to change parenting time. Skipping a required mediation step can get your motion rejected or delayed.

2. Figure out which path you're on. Are you enforcing the existing order, asking to modify it (best-interests standard), or seeking to restrict the other parent's time (endangerment standard)? If a child is in imminent danger, you're on the emergency track with its 14-day timeline.

3. Try to talk to the other parent first, and document it. Before filing a modification request, attempt to discuss the change with the other parent. If you tried, note what happened; if you couldn't, be ready to explain why. Courts want to see a good-faith effort before litigation.

4. Gather your documentation. Collect your orders, prior filings, and a dated record of every missed, shortened, or denied exchange. For enforcement, you'll need to describe the specific provisions violated with particularity.

5. File the right motion. The guided wizard will prepare and pre-fill the correct Colorado paperwork for your situation — whether that's a verified motion to enforce the order, a motion to modify, a joint stipulation if you and the other parent agree on a new schedule, or an emergency motion to restrict. Don't try to hunt down and hand-fill blank forms yourself; let the wizard match your facts to the right form.

6. Know the deadlines. If you're the one responding to a motion filed against you, you generally have 21 days to file a written response — missing it can mean the court rules without hearing your side. On enforcement motions, the court reviews within 35 days; on emergency restriction motions, the hearing happens within 14 days.

7. Prepare for the hearing. Be specific: which provisions were violated, on what dates, and exactly what relief you want (make-up time, fines, a bond, modification, contempt). For a restriction, bring concrete evidence of serious endangerment, not just worry.

8. If you both agree on a new schedule, you can submit a signed joint request explaining why the new arrangement is in the children's best interests and ask the court to enter it as an order. The wizard can prepare this too.

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Whatever you do, don't self-help your way around the order — if you're having trouble following the plan, the proper moves are mediation or a motion to the court, not quietly ignoring the schedule.

What Research Shows Can Help

The guidance here points toward keeping arrangements flexible as life changes: parents can agree to revisit the parenting time schedule when circumstances in the child's or parents' lives shift, and when the concerns that prompted a special safety-based schedule have been addressed, parents may choose to revisit that arrangement too. Building in a shared understanding that the schedule can be re-examined cooperatively — rather than only through conflict — reflects the child-focused approach these materials endorse.

Beyond that, the items here are focused mostly on the legal process rather than social-science outcomes, so there's limited research-based guidance to report. Where the law itself reflects a judgment about what helps children, it's the strong preference for frequent and continuing contact with both parents absent genuine endangerment.

What to Do Today

• Re-read your current parenting order, and specifically check whether it requires mediation before you can ask to change anything.
• Start a dated log of every missed, late, or denied exchange, with what happened each time — this becomes your evidence.
• Reach out to the other parent (if it's safe to do so) to try to resolve the issue, and write down the result of that conversation.
• Start the guided wizard so the correct motion — enforcement, modification, or restriction — gets prepared and pre-filled for your situation.
• If a child is in imminent danger, treat it as an emergency and be ready to show specific, serious facts — not just general concern.

Related Issues to Be Aware Of

• Transportation to parenting time: Many parenting-time disputes really boil down to who drives and who pays. Your plan should spell out the exchange location and who's responsible for transportation, and the court can divide travel costs between parents in proportion to income — including, for a child under twelve, the cost of a parent who accompanies the child.

• High-conflict communication: A solid plan sets out how and how often you and the other parent communicate, and Colorado law expects parents to resolve post-dissolution disputes amicably. Basic obligations are built right into the standard plan — like keeping each other updated on address and phone changes and sharing the children's health care provider contacts — and failing these can itself be a plan violation.

• Order non-compliance: Remember that support and parenting time are independent — one parent's breach never excuses the other's duties. If future compliance is the worry, the court can require the non-complying parent to post a bond or security. And if a protection order is involved, only the court can modify it; an informal agreement between the two of you to ignore its terms has no legal effect.

• Child support: Because support and parenting time are separate legal matters, don't try to use withheld time as leverage over support or vice versa. Support is calculated from both parents' combined income and the physical care arrangement, so a genuine change in the parenting schedule may ripple into the support calculation.

• Documenting problems and gathering evidence: Any motion — especially a restriction motion — must state its grounds with particularity, so specific dates, locations, and exact descriptions of what happened matter enormously. Keep an organized file of all your orders and filings so you can produce them quickly and credibly when the court or an evaluator asks.