As the legislative session nears its end, lawmakers are considering hundreds of bills that would affect all aspects of Colorado life. Several of the bills making their way through the chambers would have significant impacts on family law in Colorado if they become law.
Three of the main focuses of the General Assembly this session with respect to family law are work conducted by child and family investigators and parental responsibilities evaluators, the protection of victims in domestic violence cases and the foster youth system.
CFIs and PREs Face New Requirements
Krista Nash, principal attorney and owner at Nash Family Law, PC, noted she works extensively as a child advocate attorney in family law cases and has served as a CFI. Nash told Law Week the current bill that would affect CFIs, House Bill 24-1350, seems to be part of an ongoing, multi-year legislative effort focused on protecting children.
The first bill, HB23-1178, was signed into law last year and aimed to bring Colorado into compliance with the federal Keeping Children Safe From Violence Act, which is also known as Kayden’s Law.
“Part of the 2023 legislation basically said, ‘Look, all the CFIS and PREs have to get more training specific to domestic violence, child abuse and child sexual abuse,’” said Nash.
Nash said the training was hard for some to obtain, as the legislation was very specific and precluded some previous training efforts. But she was all for it, as more training is better to protect children.
Chelsea Augelli, shareholder at Wells Family Law and co-chair of the Colorado Women’s Bar public policy committee, spoke to Law Week in her personal capacity as a family law attorney. She said there were two sides of the coin when it came to the new training requirements in last year’s bill.
“There are some who see it as this is driving people out of our profession, we’re never going to have anybody that’s willing to do this kind of work, it’s already really underpaid,” said Augelli. “And then on the other hand, we are failing families in cases where there have been outcomes from a bad report, the system is a little broken.”
The new bill, HB24-1350, goes further.
“Part of the new legislation this year now says CFIs and PREs not only have to have all this training, they also have to more carefully consider domestic violence, including coercive control and the traumatic impact of all this on children, and they must include any such information in their report,” said Nash.
Nash added that while these changes are also important to protect children, the feedback from many CFIs and PREs is that the legislative efforts will have a chilling effect on the whole of family law child expert work. They argue many CFIs and PREs are no longer willing to do their work because the laws are overly broad and lack sufficient definition, making it impossible to do their jobs well.
Augelli said the amended version of the bill the legislators presented at the bill’s second reading directly addressed this concern.
“If you look at the amended version of the bill, the bill sponsor took out a lot of the peer-reviewed, evidence-based type of investigatory standards and other requirements for experts that would have likely caused significant issues,” said Augelli. “The language now addresses ensuring there are non-biased investigations.”
Another controversial area of the initial bill, according to Nash, is that it called for children to have more voice in domestic cases, where they can write a letter, do an in-camera interview with the judge or have their voice heard in other ways. Most of these provisions have been limited through amendments to the bill, though in-camera interviews are still part of the language and seem encouraged, especially in cases involving domestic violence, according to Nash. Nash believes the overall effort to help find ways for kids’ voices to be heard will and should continue as the family law community attempts to do better for children, while also navigating the complexities of often high-conflict dynamics between parents.
“There’s a push that we want to get more kids’ voices in, but the practicality of how this operates in family law court is complicated and needs to be carefully navigated,” said Nash.
Augelli added the amended bill is a little different, but as originally written the bill’s language on the topic was concerning.
“While we want children to have a voice, there could be really terrible consequences in high conflict cases or where a parent would take advantage of telling their child to write a letter to the judge to benefit their position. The amended bill now requires judges to give an explanation about why they are or are not granting a request to interview a child,” said Augelli. “Or the court needs to take into consideration if there’s been allegations of domestic violence or child abuse as a more important consideration in making that type of decision, because judicial discretion is what we deal with all the time.”
More Protection for Victims
One bill waiting on the governor’s signature would change the standard of obtaining a civil protection order in Colorado. HB24-1122, a bipartisan measure, is incredibly wide sweeping and very important for victims, Augelli told Law Week.
“I can’t tell you how difficult the current legal standard is to demonstrate imminent danger,” said Augelli. “It’s pretty different to some judges, and it’s not always a physical threat, or that you have true evidence of, like text messages or recordings or those types of things demonstrating the need for a protection order. But you go home at night and you’re like, ‘is this person going to harm my client, and I can’t do anything about it?’”
The new standard created by the bill is the risk or threat of physical harm, or the threat of psychological or emotional harm, which Augelli added was wider than the previous imminent danger standard.
“I think the practical effect is that it does give the opportunities to protect some victims where the type of domestic violence or coercive control they’re experiencing isn’t just physical,” said Augelli. “Is there financial control happening, where they’re watching their every move on their cellphone?”
While Augelli thinks there will be significant benefits for victims, she said there were some concerns from attorneys in family law about the measure.
“A lot of attorneys are concerned this is going to result in a lot of frivolous filings and protection orders, which definitely already happens,” said Augelli.
The bill also allows municipal courts to issue protection orders and adds a requirement that a court can’t advise a party to go file a divorce or an allocation of parental responsibilities case. Another interesting piece of the bill to Augelli was the ability to transfer wireless cellphone services as a part of the protection order.
“So if the parties are on the same cellphone plan, it gives you court authorization to remove them, which is incredibly beneficial in my opinion, because it’s really hard to get a court order to do that, let alone it be enforceable,” said Augelli.
Changes in the Foster Youth System
The 2024 legislative session saw a number of changes to the foster youth system, including a bill that codified protections for foster youth. Anaya Robinson, senior policy strategist at ACLU Colorado, told Law Week there was another youth rights bill in the legislature this year for kids in Colorado’s Division of Youth Services.
“They’re very similar bills, but it really is just a codification of rights that already exist in different parts of statute, to make sure that not only do the kids know what their rights are when they’re in the systems, but also that the people who are providing the care for those children are well aware of their rights as well.”
Robinson added that the protection of LGBTQ+ rights for youth in those systems was one of the biggest pieces in the legislation for the ACLU, as even though those rights are protected in Colorado anti-discrimination law, they still see a lot of discrimination and disenfranchisement of LGBTQ+ youth.
“So making sure that those rights are clear and have better access to the protections that those kids deserve was a real highlight of those bills for us,” said Robinson.
Robinson said these bills would help hold people and systems accountable for allowing any disenfranchisement or barriers to the rights of youth.
“I think when our kids are protected, and when they have access to their rights, we as an entire society become stronger because of that,” said Robinson. “And I think allowing kids to watch adults advocate on their behalf also helps create that in them for the future too so that that cycle continues.”