Third-Party and Grandparent Rights

This guide is based on Colorado family law information. It is provided for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. For advice about your specific situation, consult a qualified attorney.

Your Situation

You're a grandparent, great-grandparent, stepparent, or another non-parent figure who wants a legal relationship with a child — either time with them (what Colorado calls "family time" or visitation) or a more formal role in raising them (what the law calls "allocation of parental responsibilities," or APR). This is one of the hardest and most constrained areas of family law, because it sits on top of a powerful constitutional principle: a fit parent has the right to decide who spends time with their own child. The law doesn't ignore grandparents and other caregivers, but it starts from the strong assumption that the parent's decision is the right one.

That doesn't mean you have no path forward. It means you have a specific, narrow path — and you have to meet strict requirements to walk it. Whether you're seeking occasional visits or something closer to custody matters enormously, because the two requests follow different rules, different forms, and different standards of proof.

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Colorado law presumes a fit parent's decision about contact is in the child's best interests, and the burden is on you — the non-parent — to prove otherwise by clear and convincing evidence.

This guide will help you understand whether you even have the right to ask (what lawyers call "standing"), what you have to prove, how the process works, and what practical steps to take now.

What the Law Requires

For grandparent and great-grandparent family time (visitation):

Colorado law lets a grandparent or great-grandparent ask a court for reasonable family time with a grandchild — but only when a qualifying case exists or existed. Specifically, you can only ask when:

• the child's parents' marriage was dissolved, declared invalid, or legally separated by a court;
• custody or parental responsibilities were given to someone other than a parent, or the child was placed outside a parent's home (adoption is excluded); or
• the parent who connects you to the child (your own child) has died.

Without one of these triggering events, there is no door to knock on. Colorado courts have held that where a child simply lives with a parent and there has been no prior court intervention, the parent decides the level of contact, and a court cannot step in.

Two situations end the right entirely: if the child's parental rights were legally terminated, or if the child was adopted, you cannot seek family time. Colorado's highest court has also held that once a child is adopted, the parents of a deceased biological parent lose standing. And the definition of "grandparent" has limits — in at least one case, a great-grandmother was found to fall outside the statutory definition.

To bring a request, you file a petition with a supporting affidavit (a sworn written statement of facts) in the district court where the child lives, and you serve notice and a copy on the party who has custody or parental responsibilities. That party may file opposing affidavits. If no one requests a hearing, the court can decide based on the affidavits alone. But if either party requests a hearing, one must be held, and everyone who submitted an affidavit gets a chance to be heard. If the custodial parent requests a hearing, the court is required to hold one.

The standard you must meet is demanding: the law presumes the parent's decision serves the child's best interests, and you can overcome that presumption only by clear and convincing evidence that the family time you're asking for is in the child's best interests. You do not have to prove the parent is unfit or that the child is being harmed — but you do carry the ultimate burden. If a court grants visitation over a parent's objection, it must make written findings identifying the special factors it relied on.

You generally cannot file more than one family time petition every two years unless you show good cause. And if you already have a family time order and the custodial parent isn't complying, you can file a verified motion asking the court to address the noncompliance.

For allocation of parental responsibilities (a larger role):

This is a different and higher bar. A non-parent can only petition for APR in specific circumstances — generally when the child is not in the physical care of either parent, or when you have had "physical care" of the child for a meaningful period. In practice, the instructions require that a non-parent have had physical care of the child for at least six months before filing. Case law describes the standing requirement in terms of the nature, frequency, and duration of your contact and how much time the child actually spent in your physical possession — and crucially, if you were caring for the child only at the parent's direction and under their supervision, courts have found that does not count as the kind of physical care that gives you standing.

You must also overcome the same special-weight presumption favoring the fit parent, again by clear and convincing evidence, and a court awarding responsibilities to a non-parent must make specific findings identifying the special factors supporting that decision. You don't have to prove the parents are unfit, and you don't have to prove harm — but the clear-and-convincing burden is yours.

What Courts Typically Do

In practice, Colorado courts take the parental presumption seriously. They treat visitation as primarily the child's right, with the visiting adult's interest secondary, and they can place conditions on any visitation they grant.

Courts look closely at whether you genuinely have standing before they ever reach the merits. For APR requests, judges examine how the child came into your care and whether the parents were still directing your caregiving — a warm bond between you and the child, or even the absence of a bond between the child and the parents, does not by itself create standing if the parents were still calling the shots.

Courts also require a real factual record. In one case, awarding custody to grandparents was found to be an abuse of discretion where there was no evidence about the conditions in their home or even that they wanted custody. Judges want concrete facts, not assumptions.

Where a non-parent was genuinely invited into a parenting role — for example, a parent who filed for joint custody with the non-parent, signed a joint parenting plan, and encouraged the relationship — courts have been willing to find, on clear and convincing evidence, that allocating responsibilities to that "psychological parent" served the child's best interests. Outcomes vary widely with the facts, and nothing here guarantees any particular result.

If you already hold a visitation order and a parent wants to end it, the parent must first show a material change in circumstances — things like a remarriage, a stepparent adoption, therapist reports, or evidence of the child's school difficulties can meet that threshold — and then you would again have to rebut the presumption by clear and convincing evidence.

Step by Step: What to Do

1. Confirm you have a triggering event and standing. Before anything else, figure out whether one of the qualifying situations exists — a divorce/separation/invalidated marriage, the child placed outside a parent's home or custody given to a non-parent, or the death of your child who was the child's parent. If none applies, a court likely can't help you. For an APR request, assess whether you've had genuine physical care of the child (generally six months or more) that wasn't merely at the parent's direction.

2. Check the two disqualifiers. If the child has been adopted or a parent's rights were terminated, the family time path is closed.

3. Identify the correct case and court. Your request usually goes into an existing case — a divorce or custody matter, a juvenile or paternity case, a dependency case, or a probate case where a parent died — in the county where that case sits and where the child lives. A paternity proceeding counts as a qualifying case. Filing in the wrong case type can delay or defeat your request, so getting this right matters.

4. Prepare and file your paperwork. If you're joining an existing case, you'll file a motion to intervene (asking the court to let you be part of the case) and, once allowed, your actual request for family time along with your supporting affidavit. If both parents have died and no case (or only a probate case) exists, you may be able to start fresh without the intervention papers. Rather than hunting down and hand-completing the right forms — and there are several, with easy-to-confuse numbers — let the guided wizard on this site interview you and prepare and pre-fill the correct paperwork for your exact situation.

5. Serve the other parties. After filing, you must formally serve notice and a copy of your affidavit on the party who has custody or parental responsibilities. A filing fee applies when you make the actual family time request.

6. Expect a response and possibly a hearing. A party who disagrees has 21 days to file a written response and serve it, and they can ask for a hearing in that response. If either side requests a hearing — or the custodial parent does — the court will hold one, and you'll get your chance to be heard.

7. Build a real factual record. Gather concrete evidence tied to the child's best interests — your history with the child, what contact looked like, and (for APR) the conditions of your home and your genuine willingness to take on the role. Courts will not fill in gaps for you.

8. Mind the two-year limit. If you filed a similar request within the past two years, you must attach the court order giving you permission to re-file, or your new request will be incomplete.

What Research Shows Can Help

The items provided here focus on legal standards and procedure rather than social-science research on grandparent and non-parent relationships. Because this guide only draws on the materials reviewed for it, there isn't research-based guidance to report on this particular topic. What the law and court practice consistently emphasize is that the decisions turn on the child's best interests — framing your request around the child's well-being, rather than your own desire for contact, is both the legal standard and the practical reality of how these cases are decided.

What to Do Today

• Write down your triggering event. In one or two sentences, identify which qualifying situation applies to you (divorce, out-of-home placement, death of the parent who is your child). If you can't name one, that's the first thing to resolve.
• Find the existing case and the right court. Locate the case number and the county for any existing divorce, custody, paternity, dependency, or probate matter involving the child. The Colorado Court Finder tool at courts.state.co.us can help you locate the correct courthouse.
• Start gathering your best-interests facts. Begin a simple timeline of your relationship with the child — how often you saw them, for how long, and what role you played — since you'll need concrete, credible facts.
• Start the guided wizard. Let it walk you through your situation and prepare the correct, pre-filled forms so you don't risk filing the wrong paperwork in the wrong case.
• Mark the 21-day deadlines. Whether you're filing or responding, note that written responses are due within 21 days of service — missing that window can cost you.

Related Issues to Be Aware Of

Establishing parentage. Because a paternity case counts as a qualifying "child custody case," questions of who the child's legal parent is can directly open — or close — your standing to seek visitation. If parentage is still being sorted out through DNA testing, note that genetic tests generally need to be obtained and submitted before a final decree, or they may be barred later.

Missed or modified parenting time. If you do get a family time order and the custodial parent won't comply, there's a path to enforce it, and the law allows remedies like makeup time of the same type and duration. Keep in mind that a parent's own parenting-time order is legally independent from any grandparent family time order — changes to one don't automatically change the other.

The child's voice in proceedings. In a grandparent family time case, the court can appoint a legal representative for the child, and the child's wishes — if the child is mature enough to express reasoned views — can reach the judge through an investigator, an evaluator, or an in-chambers interview. Because these cases turn entirely on the child's best interests, how the child's perspective is presented can be pivotal.