Here at Matthews & Matthews we receive a number of calls each month from people who are looking to change parenting time or decision making after final orders have been entered by the Court.

Changing Parenting Time or Decision Making does require returning to Court unless the parents can come to an agreement regarding the change.

Best Interest of the Child Standard
There are two ways a court will look at a request to change parenting arrangements. If the non-residential parent (the parent with the least parenting time) is asking to increase their time with the child the Court will look at the request from the perspective of what is in the "best interest" of the child.

Endangerment Standard
However, if the parent requesting the change is looking to restrict the other parent's time with the child or they are asking to change the residential parent (the parent with the majority of the time), the the Court will use a much higher standard of review. The Court will only agree to the requested change if there is sufficient evidence of endangerment to the child's physical health or emotional development.

If you are dealing with a physical danger like neglect or physical or sexual abuse, the evidence required is clear, however, endangerment to emotional development remains a grey area.

Endangerment to Emotional Development
Cases of endangerment to emotional development tend to require expert testimony. There is a line between bad parenting and "endangerment to emotional development". Expert testimony by a therapist who has evaluated the child will assist the court in determining if that line has been crossed. Factors to consider beyond the evidence supporting the alleged parental behavior include risk and resiliency factors concerning the child.

In a case where endangerment to emotional development is alleged, either parent or the Court may request that a Child and Family Investigator be appointed. However, due to the unclear nature of emotional endangerment, it may be wise to have the child evaluated by a professional with specific expertise in children's emotional issues within the family system like a licenced Marriage and Family Therapist.

Evaluating the child when you have joint decision making
In the case of parents with joint decision making this can be a problem in that the accused parent might not agree to the evaluation of the child. However, there are often provisions in the parenting plan that allows one parent to get medical attention in the case of an emergency without the consent of the other parent. You would have to look at the circumstances of the particular case to determine if the emergency provision would apply to evaluating the child for the purposes of determining endangerment to emotional development. This decision should be discussed with legal counsel before proceeding.

Colorado Case Law on Emotional Endangerment
There are a few Colorado Appellate Court cases that have ruled on what constitutes endangerment to emotional development. The facts of every case are different but the following situations provide some guidance on what a Court will consider endangerment to emotional development:

1. Parental Alienation when well documented with expert testimony.
2. Father's reluctance to recognize child's problems and inability to work with mother in addressing those problems.
3. Where record revealed abundant evidence that children feared mother's new husband would sexually molest them.
4. Religious beliefs when the evidence showed such beliefs or practices were reasonably likely to cause present or future harm to physical or mental development of the child.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 9:39 am and is filed under Child Custody, Modification of Parenting Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.