Graham.Law Blog

It was inevitable – the culture wars being fought over LGBTQ+ issues have entered the parenting arena, and as one may imagine, not in a good way. At least two different states have enacted legislation which would give their courts emergency parenting jurisdiction over transgender children based upon gender affirmation…

Protecting children from potential child abuse in Colorado has long been the goal of judges in custody cases. In our Domestic Violence & Child Custody article in the Colorado Family Law Guide, there are several ways which courts are already required to consider allegations of spousal or child abuse, sexual…

In the seminal 2006 C.A. case, the Colorado Supreme Court promulgated the standard for grandparent visitation rights in Colorado, harmonizing the grandparent rights statute with the “special weight” required by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Troxel, which requires “a presumption that fit parents act in the best interests of…

In the early 2000s, parenting plans would sometimes include clauses which required a parent after divorce to make sure the children did not call a stepparent by a parental term such as “Dad” or “Mom.” The theory was that a child has only two parents, and elevating a stepparent in…

Co-Parenting with any parent on the other side can be challenging, even when both parents are completely “normal” but just disagree. But when one parent has emotional issues or personality disorders, the challenges are far greater, especially when the other is a narcissist parent who is self-centered and lacks empathy….

The Colorado Supreme Court rarely issues decisions pertaining to ICWA, or the Indian Child Welfare Act requirements, and as a result, this is only our second blog post on ICWA (the first was back in 2020, pertaining to the applicability of ICWA to adoption cases). A brand new decision, E.A.M.,…

Once a family law judge determines parenting time, it is not easy to change the majority residential parent. A permanent custody change requires either the other parent’s agreement, consent to the child being integrated into the parent’s home, or endangerment. It is this middle factor which was at issue in…

This was unexpected. It’s not often that an attempt to get around child hearsay rules through child testimony resulted in a dispute over a child being a witness in a divorce case making national headlines! Yet again, the tortured divorce proceedings between Hollywood superstars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt provide…

Any family law attorney will at some stage have initiated or defended against a motion to restrict parenting time, which is what Colorado calls an emergency custody proceeding. While most child custody motions move at a normal judicial pace, a motion to restrict is addressed almost immediately, with a same-day…

Family law decisions at the U.S. Supreme Court are rare, since domestic relations law is almost entirely governed by state law, not federal law. But there are enough areas of federal interest (military retirement, Hague Convention international child custody issues, and ICWA, or the Indian Child Welfare Act) that we…