Divorce and custody counsel for Evergreen and Genesee.

What an Evergreen divorce is usually about.

The house is the case. A home on five acres in Evergreen or a view lot in Genesee is usually worth more than everything else the couple owns, it was often bought with one spouse’s money or improved with one family’s help, and neither spouse can buy the other out at today’s prices without selling something. Colorado divides marital property equitably, keeps separate property separate, and treats the increase in value during the marriage as marital, so an Evergreen file starts with the deed, the closing statement, and the receipts for the addition — the tracing — before anyone talks about who keeps it. Add a business or a professional practice, which is common up here — or an engineer’s equity from Lockheed Martin Space down the hill in Littleton, the county’s largest private employer — and a retirement account that needs a qualified domestic relations order, and the division has to be designed rather than split.

The other constant is distance. A parent who stays in Evergreen and a parent who moves to Lakewood or Denver are forty minutes apart on a good day and longer in January, and the parenting plan, the school, and the exchange point have to be built around that fact rather than around a template. I have written about the money on Real Estate Division and Separate Property & Tracing.

Jefferson County District Court, Golden.

Evergreen, Genesee, Conifer, Indian Hills and Morrison are in Jefferson County, so a case filed here goes to the 1st Judicial District at the Jefferson Combined Court on Jefferson County Parkway in Golden — about twenty-five minutes down I-70 from Evergreen and forty from my office in Greenwood Village. Jefferson does not have a separate family bench: every district judge carries domestic cases alongside civil and criminal, the magistrates handle the preliminary domestic matters, and two family court facilitators run the initial status conferences. One local rule matters more in Evergreen than anywhere else: under the district’s standing order, a motion to relocate the children goes to a district judge rather than a magistrate, as do challenges to a prenuptial agreement and motions to reopen a decree for nondisclosure, and post-decree motions stay with the division that entered the decree for eighteen months. The court has a dedicated domestic-relations line, and the counter closes at noon on Fridays; the atrium drop box stays open until 5:30 p.m. The detail, and every other metro courthouse, is on the Denver Metro Family Courts page.

Custody across a mountain commute.

Most Evergreen custody cases turn on geography. Colorado’s best-interests factors include the physical proximity of the parents’ homes and each parent’s past pattern of involvement, and when one home is on the hill and the other is in town, a week-on, week-off schedule can put a child in a car for an hour a day. I draft plans around the school calendar, the drive, and the winter, and when a parent proposes moving the children out of the district or the state, the relocation rules decide the case and they are strict. More on Parenting-Time Schedules and Relocation & Move-Away.

Related: Real Estate Division  ·  Separate Property & Tracing  ·  Business Owner Divorce  ·  Relocation & Move-Away  ·  Parenting-Time Schedules
Nearby: Golden  ·  Boulder  ·  Cherry Creek  ·  Denver Metro Family Courts