Aurora Child Custody Lawyer

When it comes to the hardships associated with divorce – and there are many – child custody issues are one of the most difficult.

If you’re facing a divorce, and you and your divorcing spouse face determinations regarding your child custody arrangements, it’s in your best interest to consult with our experienced Aurora child custody lawyers. Your ongoing relationship with your children and their continued health and well-being are simply too important not to do so.

Child Custody Arrangements in Colorado

While every child custody case is unique with its own set of circumstances, there are some basics that generally apply, including:

• Unless the circumstances involved are quite extreme, both parents usually share what is known as legal custody. This means that both parents make important decisions on behalf of their children regarding their education, health care, religious upbringing, and extracurricular activities.
• While both parents also usually share what is known as physical custody, one parent will typically be awarded the role of the primary custodial parent, and this means that the children live primarily with this parent in his or her home.
• The parent who isn’t the primary custodial parent generally has a visitation schedule with the children and pays the other parent-child support to help offset the expense of supporting the children on a day-to-day basis. The State of Colorado mandates that both parents remain financially responsible for their children until they enter adulthood, and child support is the legal mechanism for ensuring that this happens.

Within these basic guidelines, divorced parents can get quite creative with their custody arrangements.

Custody Can be a Hotly Contested Issue

Many issues related to divorce can become hotly contested, and legal child custody can be one of them. If you and your divorcing spouse cannot agree on terms related to child custody that you can both sign off on, you’ll need to work closely with your respective custody attorneys to help you find a middle ground.

If you’ve established that you and your soon-to-be-ex are too far apart on the issue of custody, your attorney can guide you through the next steps of the process. Generally, things proceed in the following order:

• Your respective custody attorneys will negotiate on your behalf to attempt to reach terms that you can both live with.
• If that fails to work, you will likely proceed to mediation where a professional mediator – a neutral third-party – will help you identify your priorities related to custody and help you explore your options. Mediation helps many couples find that elusive middle ground that allows them to move forward with acceptable terms that they may not have even considered prior. Further, your mediator will help you both get a better idea of how the judge will likely rule (although there is no way of definitively knowing), which can be motivating.
• If mediation isn’t successful in relation to child custody, you and your spouse will proceed to court.

If Your Case Proceeds to Court

If your legal custody issue goes before the court, there are some important points to keep in mind:

• Once you go before the court, the decision-making power is transferred from you to the judge in your case. Many parents are naturally loath to cede this important right.
• While Colorado courts always base their custody decisions on the best interests of the children, the judge does not – and cannot – know your children and their unique needs the way you do.

Whenever possible, it’s in you and your children’s best interests to find mutually agreeable custody terms before it comes to having the court make the determinations for you. When a spouse, however, chooses not to give an inch and insists on making the divorce as contentious as possible, going to court is likely to be your only option to receive a fair and favorable outcome.

Make the Call to our Experienced Aurora Child Custody Lawyer

If custody will be an issue in your divorce, the Aurora child custody lawyer at CNL Law Firm, PLLC, has the compassion, commitment, and experience to help you move forward toward custody terms that work for you – with the least intervention possible. If your case does proceed to court, however, we have extensive experience helping clients like you successfully navigate the court system and come out on the other side with beneficial custody terms. Your custody issues are too important to leave to chance, so please don’t hesitate to contact us online or call us at (720) 370-2171 for more information today.