Creating the Parenting Plan

Before we begin: This guide is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. For advice about your specific situation, consult a qualified Colorado family law attorney.

Your Situation

If you have children and you're going through a divorce, separation, or a case to establish parentage, you'll need a parenting plan. This is the document that spells out where your children live, how big decisions about their lives get made, and when each of you has time with them. It matters enormously — for your children's stability and for your own daily life — because it becomes a court order that both of you have to follow.

Here's something important to understand from the start: in Colorado, the parenting plan is not about who "wins." Colorado law treats these cases as a process for figuring out what arrangement serves your children's best interests, not as a contest between two parents. Even the terms of a separation agreement covering parenting time and decisions about the children do not automatically bind the court — the judge reviews them separately. This guide will help you understand what your plan must contain, how a court decides when parents can't agree, and how to build a plan that actually works for children of different ages.

What the Law Requires

Colorado law requires courts to allocate parenting time and decision-making based on the best interests of the child, with the child's safety, and physical, mental, and emotional needs, given paramount consideration. The law is clear that the welfare of the child controls — the rights, wishes, and convenience of the parents are secondary.

Colorado law recognizes two distinct pieces that every parenting plan must address:

• Decision-making responsibility — who makes the major decisions about the child's schooling, medical and mental health care, religious upbringing, extracurricular activities, and matters like a passport. Each of these can be assigned jointly to both parents, to one parent alone, or in some combination.
• Parenting time — the actual schedule of when the child is with each parent.

The statute says a parenting plan should be as specific as possible. It can cover the type of decision-making awarded, a practical schedule that includes holidays and school vacations, procedures for exchanging the child, methods for the parents to communicate about the child, and procedures for a parent to stay in touch with the child during the other parent's time.

💡

Colorado law requires that if neither parent submits a parenting plan the court approves, the court must create one on its own, covering both parenting time and decision-making.

A few other legal rules shape what a court can and can't consider. The court cannot weigh a parent's conduct that has no effect on that parent's relationship with the child. Restricting a parent's religious instruction requires detailed proof that conflicting instruction would cause substantial harm to the child. And the law declares that in most cases it serves a child's best interests to have a relationship with both parents and to have frequent contact with both — though the law is equally clear that co-parenting is not appropriate in every situation, and safety always comes first. In a contested final hearing, the court must state on the record which best-interest factors it considered and why its decision serves the child.

For purposes of allocating parental responsibilities, Colorado defines a "child" as an unmarried person under 21.

What Courts Typically Do

When parents can't agree, Colorado courts decide parenting time by weighing a set of statutory best-interest factors. No single factor automatically decides the outcome — the judge has broad discretion to decide how much weight each factor deserves in your particular situation. The factors courts consider include:

• The wishes of each parent regarding parenting time.
• The wishes of the child, if the child is mature enough to express reasoned and independent preferences.
• The child's relationships with each parent, siblings, and others who significantly affect the child.
• How settled the child is in their home, school, and community — this is where arguments for continuity and stability come in.
• The mental and physical health of everyone involved.
• Each parent's ability to encourage the child's relationship with the other parent.
• Each parent's past pattern of involvement, reflecting a system of values, time commitment, and mutual support.
• The physical distance between the parents' homes, which affects what schedule is actually workable.
• Each parent's ability to put the child's needs ahead of their own.
• Any history of child abuse, child neglect, or spouse abuse.

In practice, courts find documented, consistent involvement in a child's life persuasive — it speaks directly to the "past pattern of involvement" factor. Judges also look hard at whether a proposed arrangement promotes regular, continuing contact between the children and both parents, and at the practical realities: work schedules, distance, and transportation all affect what's feasible.

One thing worth knowing: a vague, general parenting-time order can be treated as essentially useless when there's a total lack of cooperation between parents. That's a strong reason to make your plan as detailed as possible. Courts don't need to issue written findings on every single factor, but the record must show they considered the ones relevant to your case.

Where there are multiple children, the court evaluates each child's individual best interests rather than treating the siblings as a single unit. And a parent who is otherwise fit can still be given a different arrangement than they wanted if the evidence shows it better serves the child.

Step by Step: What to Do

1. Figure out what kind of case you're in. Parenting plans come up in divorce, legal separation, and parentage (establishing legal parenthood) cases. A single parentage case can resolve legal parentage, decision-making, parenting time, and child support all at once — you don't need separate cases for each.

2. Decide whether you need a temporary arrangement now. If you can't agree informally while the case is pending, you can ask the court to put a temporary parenting schedule in place so your children have stability during the process. The guided wizard will prepare and pre-fill the paperwork that asks for temporary parenting time and decision-making orders.

3. Try to reach an agreed plan. If you and the other parent can agree on a joint plan, that's generally preferable, and you'll bring the completed plan to your Initial Status Conference. If you can't agree, each of you may submit your own proposed plan for the court to review.

4. Build the actual plan, and make it specific. Address both pieces: how each category of major decision gets made (school, medical/mental health, religion, extracurriculars, passport), and a detailed parenting-time schedule. The guided wizard will prepare and pre-fill the parenting plan document, and it will flag whether yours is a full or partial plan.

5. Spell out the schedule in detail. Set exact pick-up and drop-off times for regular weeks and alternating weekends, including variations for days when school isn't in session. Cover each major holiday with precise start and end times — courts recommend covering New Year's, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas — plus Mother's Day and Father's Day. Detail reduces conflict around the highest-tension moments.

6. Address exchanges, communication, and transportation. State where exchanges happen and who is responsible for transporting the child, how the two of you will communicate about the child, and how each parent stays in touch with the child during the other's time.

7. Don't forget the financial pieces. Specify who claims each child as a tax exemption and in which years — if you leave this out, a statutory default formula based on each parent's financial contribution takes over, which may not match what you'd prefer. Child support is also typically resolved alongside the plan.

8. Attend your conference or hearing. If you've agreed, you'll submit the plan (and, after mediation, a certification that you completed it). If you can't agree, the court will decide based on the best-interest factors, and in a contested final hearing it will explain its reasoning on the record.

What Research Shows Can Help

The items available here focus mostly on the law and court practice rather than social-science research, so there's limited research-based guidance to pass along. What the available material does reflect — through Colorado's own legislative findings — is the recognition that in most (not all) circumstances, children benefit from frequent, continuing contact with both parents, and from having both parents meaningfully involved in their lives. The practical corollary that runs through court guidance is that specificity and cooperation help: detailed, concrete plans prevent the disputes that a vague order invites, and keeping a child in their familiar routine (school, activities, community) supports stability. If you want research-backed guidance tailored to your children's ages, a family therapist or parenting coordinator may be able to provide it.

What to Do Today

• Start the guided wizard so your parenting plan and related paperwork can be prepared and pre-filled for your type of case.
• Write down your children's current routine — school, activities, medical providers, and who has handled what. This supports the "past involvement" and "adjustment to home and community" factors.
• Draft a realistic weekly and holiday schedule that accounts for both parents' work schedules and the distance between your homes.
• List the major decision categories (school, medical/mental health, religion, extracurriculars, passport) and jot down how you think each should be handled.
• If there's any safety concern, make it a priority — the child's safety is the paramount consideration in every parenting decision, and you should raise it with the court and, if needed, seek immediate help.

Related Issues to Be Aware Of

• When parenting time is missed or needs changing: Even a well-drafted plan can break down. Colorado provides remedies when a parent is denied time — including makeup parenting time of the same type and duration — and a court can revisit the child's best interests and modify the order when it isn't being followed. Keep records if problems arise.

• Decision-making disputes: Decision-making can be allocated issue-by-issue, and courts weigh whether you two can actually cooperate. Importantly, after a finding of domestic violence or qualifying abuse, courts will not order joint decision-making over the other party's objection absent specific safety findings. Note that in a genuine medical emergency, either parent may get necessary treatment without violating the order.

• The child's voice in the proceedings: Your child's wishes matter if they're mature enough to express reasoned, independent views — but your child typically doesn't testify in open court. Their voice can reach the judge through an investigator, an evaluator, a legal representative, or an in-chambers interview with the judge.

• Expert witnesses and evaluators: The court can appoint a neutral Child and Family Investigator to look into your family and recommend arrangements. The court must consider the full report and any testimony before adopting any recommendation — it is not bound by it. After an abuse finding, the court can order that parent to undergo a domestic violence evaluation.

• Transportation to parenting time: Your plan should specify where exchanges occur and who handles transportation. Courts must provide for the cost of transporting the child between homes, divided in proportion to the parents' incomes — and for a child under 12, the cost of an accompanying parent can be included.