In this solo episode of the Children First Family Law podcast, Krista, a Colorado-based family law attorney and child advocate, breaks down her structured approach to serving as a Child’s Legal Representative (CLR) in high-conflict divorce and custody cases across the state.
Krista shares her 11-step process for advocating on behalf of children during some of the most complex and emotionally charged family law matters. Drawing on her experience practicing throughout Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs, she guides listeners through the process of how CLRs are appointed, their interactions with families, and how they contribute to shaping child-centered solutions both inside and outside the courtroom.
From initial appointments and home visits to therapeutic collaboration and final court engagement, Krista explains how an active, negotiation-based model empowers children to have a voice while protecting their well-being. She also compares the CLR role to other evaluative processes used in Colorado family courts, including CFIs and PREs, highlighting the benefits of real-time engagement and ongoing problem-solving.
For parents, attorneys, and professionals working in Colorado family law, this episode offers a clear and practical guide to what it means to truly represent the best interests of the child, with a process that’s informed, intentional, and deeply rooted in trauma-aware advocacy.
In this episode, you will hear:
- How courts appoint a Child’s Legal Representative (CLR) in Colorado
- Why earlier CLR involvement can lead to better outcomes for families
- A detailed look at Krista’s 11-step CLR process, from start to finish
- The value of active negotiation over passive observation in high-conflict parenting cases
- The difference between a CLR and roles like CFIs or parenting evaluators
- Strategies to support children’s voices in parenting time disputes
- How Colorado-specific forms (JDF 1319/1320) initiate the CLR appointment process
Resources from this Episode
www.childrenfirstfamilylaw.com
All states have different laws; be sure you are checking out your state laws specifically surrounding divorce. Krista is a licensed attorney in Colorado and Wyoming but is not providing through this podcast legal advice. Please be sure to seek independent legal counsel in your area for your specific situation.
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How to Work with a CLR in Colorado Family Law Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Children First Family Law podcast. Our host, Krista Nash, is an attorney, mediator, a parenting coordinator, and child advocate with a heart to facilitate conversations about how to help children flourish amidst the broken area of family law. As a child advocate in demand for her expertise throughout Colorado and as a speaker on these issues at a national level, Krista is passionate about facilitating and creatively finding solutions to approach family law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice. As always, please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
Welcome to today’s episode of the podcast. I’m glad you’re here. Today we’re going to be talking about how I go about the work of child advocacy when I am in the seat of the child’s legal representative or CLR, which specifically is what we call the best interests attorney for children in Colorado when we have domestic relations cases, generally divorce or allocation of parental responsibilities, going on.
There are a lot of other names for this role with slight deviations and variations in how the role is performed in various states and around the world. So, you’ll want to check your local jurisdiction for how it works for you and your family. But the principles that I’ll share today I think are broadly applicable across a lot of different places and give really a good sense to parents and to professionals about how to best use [00:01:00] the person who is in the seat of the best interests of the child and how this becomes a role that can be really productive, not just taking up space, and really bring some solutions to families and to children specifically. I am really thinking about this top of mind because I am just back this weekend from spending the week at a big international conference: the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts had its conference in New Orleans this past week, and I had the privilege of being able to speak there about this very topic and got a lot of really great feedback from people very inspired and encouraged that this is a really great way to go about this potentially in their own jurisdictions, helping really get children’s interests heard, their voices heard, and to help professionals and parents really just get to a better place for children in these very difficult cases.
So, I’m going to go about telling you specific to Colorado, whether you’re in Denver [00:02:00] or Arvada, down to Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, anywhere really in the Denver metro area that you find yourself, you have the ability to get a child’s legal representative if your case warrants it. And I will start with explaining how that appointment happens.
We will go through about 10 or 11 steps that I go through in this role. I will note that I am about to start a best interest group for Colorado CLRs, which potentially could expand more broadly than that, but for now in Colorado to talk through with other attorneys how to best do this role. We have a statute that allows us to take on this assignment for the courts and for families, and we have what’s called a Chief Justice Directive that directs some of the work that we do.
But from person to person, there’s a lot of deviation between how people go about this role. I hear a lot that people like the way that I do it. Not that it’s the only way to do it, but my role and approach to [00:03:00] this is far more active. And I take much more of a negotiating role to be able to really try to help come up with solutions as opposed to merely just being a scribe for children’s voices.
I am really trying to activate solutions for people. So, with that, let me explain first of all how the appointment happens. Usually these cases are post-decree, meaning a divorce has already occurred, or the allocation of parental responsibilities has already occurred. And we are in a situation where we have parents fighting generally quite a bit and generally over quite some time.
I would prefer if these appointments actually happened earlier, and I think it is happening now from time to time that I’m being appointed earlier in a case, in a pre-decree situation. Pre-decree means the divorce has not occurred yet. Or the final orders allocating parenting time and decision-making responsibilities have not yet occurred.
I would like to have these start earlier because it allows me to bring [00:04:00] problem solving to a family earlier before we have years and years or decades sometimes of actual toxicity and problems that can become very entrenched. So, at any phase it can be difficult, but particularly the longer we go, the harder it is to affect change.
It’s like getting a cancer diagnosis really late in the process. It’s harder to treat. More pre-decree would be great. Often though, these come on not so proactively in terms of, “Hey, let’s come together and really find somebody who can help us solve some problems here.” They come in instead, when we have a real crisis occurring.
For example, we have in Colorado we have something called a motion to restrict. A parent will file a restriction motion, which is a nuclear bomb to say this other parent is not safe. Really they get filed for lots of reasons, but they’re supposed to be filed only if there is an imminent risk of emotional or physical harm to a child.
People sometimes file them for [00:05:00] less reasons than that and they’re often denied if they don’t meet the standards that are required for imminence. But if initially granted it then does require a hearing to occur if the restriction is granted. And judges are often left with a very short amount of time on the docket because the hearing has to be set so quickly.
And so, a very frequent way that I get appointed is when that restriction hearing happens and the court does an intermediary approach to be able to try to help the family. One of those things it does is appoint a CLR to be able to go and lay eyes on the kids and the parents and try to give more information to the court.
Another time that I can be appointed is when there are filings for orders of protection. That happens a lot that we have a crisis happening that is requiring some kind of restriction in terms of a parent’s ability to be around the other parent. And that oftentimes also results in the appointment of a child’s legal representative.
Sometimes it happens when we have requests for temporary orders [00:06:00] that come in, and if those are extreme enough then sometimes the court will say, “I really need some help managing this or getting some eyes on the children.” And then sometimes people will come in and say that they would like the children or child interviewed, and that could happen at any time in a case.
Many judges are not comfortable with doing interviews of children. Oftentimes they’re called in camera interviews, in camera meaning in chambers, outside of the realm of the regular courtroom. And so oftentimes that’s another way that there’s a genesis for a CLR appointment.
Too triage and forecast to prevent a crisis would be the better way to do these appointments. But really at any point in a case a child representative can be appointed. I’ve talked in other presentations and in other podcasts before about the differences between appointing other types of child advocates and the challenges for those appointments versus a child’s legal representative.
So, I won’t get into that explicitly today, but I [00:07:00] will just reiterate that our typical child custody evaluators in Colorado, CFIs and PREs, are another option that people use frequently to get information about children more directly to the court. I would refer you back to my previous podcast on those, but also just note that it usually can take a lot of time and there is a dearth of availability of these people because a lot of them are under a lot of legislative heat at the moment, and therefore there are a lot of people who have left the field.
That’s made it even harder and made it take even longer to get those reports done. Also, there are inherently adversarial processes to get CFI or PRE reports done because parents prepare and provide documents, provide a lot of evidence, provide a lot of statements from themselves and their family members and friends, all usually against the other parent.
So, the whole process can be very adversarial. And then really, once the CFI or PRE has written that report, they’re done. You’re not able to sit in that seat where you’re [00:08:00] pivotal to a negotiation and really bring your insight and negotiation ability, which is one of the really strong benefits of having a CLR.
So those are the limitations, and again, I would encourage you to check some of those other podcasts out that I’ve done about the differences between the various types of roles. Okay, so as we get these appointments going, here are the steps as to the work.
STEP ONE: CLR appointment gets made by the court. Make sure the order is sufficient.
This is literally an order that issues that says this person is now appointed as a child’s legal representative. That is done through Colorado through a JDF 1320. If you Google JDF 1320 in Colorado, you will find that form. That’s the proposed order. The proposed motion is JDF 1319. That’s the request you make to the court and you say, hello, we need a CLR.
A lot of times the courts sua sponte – again, more Latin – that means on their own [00:09:00] initiative, just make that appointment without the motion being filed. But you as a parent or you as a professional may ask for a CLR to be appointed, and you do that through JDF 1319 with 1320 as the proposed order that you file.
Ideally, it’s best if those appointments are for all kids in a family, not just one. Because while you might be having contact problems, for example, between one parent and one child only. Generally, it is much better for the CLR to be able to come on and talk to all the kids. I tend to talk to all the kids anyway, even if they’re not on the official appointment, obviously with the permission of the parents, but it’s just usually easier to have all of the kids have this representation.
I oftentimes get questions about whether there are conflicts of interest representing more than one child’s best interests. I have almost never come across that, although there are certain circumstances where there would be, for [00:10:00] example, let’s say one child has been accused of some kind of abuse of the other child.
That would be something where it would be better to have two child legal representatives, not just one, or if there were any other perceived conflict between the children. But that is a pretty rare situation in my practice. It is on my ethics for me to go in and determine whether or not I believe that the children need different representation.
So even if I were to be assigned or appointed on more than one child, then if I perceive there to be a conflict as we move forward, I would go to the court and ask for that to change or ask for myself to terminate if it had gotten too far along.
The other thing about the order is that it should have specific notes regarding the issues of why I was appointed. If a parent or the attorney is asking for that, that usually comes in the form of a motion. It explains why that person thinks that a CLR would be helpful. If the court [00:11:00] is doing it on his or her own, the judicial officer oftentimes puts some specific notes into that order. That can be very helpful as well and gives some clues to the CLR as to what the main issues are in the case.
Also, we have the opportunity in that order of indicating what the scope of the assignment is. There are check boxes that get marked that are for parenting time, for decision making, for substance abuse, for domestic violence. And usually it is best to check all of them, even if these are minor issues in the case. I suppose if there is no substance abuse issue or no domestic violence issue, those wouldn’t need to be checked. But it also is never a problem to go ahead and just check all those boxes so that the CLR knows that the scope is very wide.
Also, the CLR does have the obligation and responsibility and opportunity to go back even if a limited appointment comes through to go ask the [00:12:00] court to extend that if the attorney believes that is in the best interests of the children. So you can avoid the need for those expansion motions to have to be filed or for there to be any question at all if you do all the children, all the scope and all of the different issues from the outset.
Okay. So that’s step one.
STEP TWO: Onboarding & Interviewing of Parents
Step two is onboarding for the CLR and the CLR’s staff. If the CLR has a staff, it is very helpful because it allows administrative functions and the things that paralegals can do to be done by someone other than the attorney. If they have paralegals, that can be very helpful and save parents money so that CLR or his or her team then do a docket review.
The CLR should be given attorney access to the docket and that allows the CLR staff or the CLR him or herself to have a very good sense of what has happened in the case by reviewing what has happened. We tend to do that from a high [00:13:00] level, just trying to get a sense of what has occurred so far.
Like I said, some of these cases have been going on for many years. So often there have been a wide variety of motions filed, a wide variety of hearings, and so we spend a little bit of time trying to scope that.
Next in onboarding, we do interviews with parents that can be with or without attorneys.
Sometimes people have attorneys, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes their attorneys want to be on those initial interviews and sometimes they don’t. It’s completely up to the parent and that parent’s attorney whether or not that attorney is with the parent for everything or only some things. Generally, if it’s somebody who has not worked with me before, then they might be more involved initially until they feel more comfortable, and then they often are not involved in everything. It often is a matter of cost to have them involved in all of the different things. Also I go do home visits where parents and children are, and most attorneys who represent parents don’t want [00:14:00] to be coming on those home visits. I don’t think I’ve ever had an attorney want to go on one of those and it wouldn’t be ideal anyway. I just always try to be very respectful though of whether an attorney wants to have that client presence with the attorney or not. It is the parent’s decision as to whether or not that we handle it with me directly or with the parent with their attorney present.
Also, I then do interviews of kids’ therapists. I’ve found that when I wait to talk to kids’ therapists, I usually wish that I hadn’t waited because they give a lot of insight that’s very important. Before I talk to children directly, I suppose I also, if there was a serious issue, for example, with a school, I might consider talking to school professionals first, and I will say that it is a very important part of the process that everyone signs releases so that those interviews can occur.
That is expected when we have child custody evaluators on board. It is also [00:15:00] expected when we have children’s legal representatives on board, because that is part of the work is doing that investigative work in both roles. So, parents and in Colorado for children 12 and up, we have children holding their own privilege in their therapeutic work, so they have to be willing and able to sign these releases. If they’re unwilling, then I would have a conversation with the kids and explain why I need it. I often can do a limited release if kids are opposed because there’s usually reasons they might have told their therapist something that they don’t want their parents to find out.
That is pretty different from the things I’m looking at in my work, and so I’m usually able to do limited releases regarding parenting time and living in both households and relationships with siblings and things like that. I don’t necessarily need a full release, so that’s one workaround. Or sometimes we’ll do a limited release, and then once the children get to know me or the child gets to know me and I then have more experience and trust building [00:16:00] I’ve done with them, then they let me have more access to their therapists.
Also, I’m always through every step trying to scope whether we have domestic violence, intimate partner violence – you’ll hear us refer to that as dv, domestic violence, or IPV, intimate partner violence – and/or child abuse situations. If we have those things, it is something that then makes the CLR approach deviate in disparate ways depending on the situation.
So that is step two.
STEP THREE: Direct Work with the Child(ren)
Next we have step three, and that is direct work with the child(ren). This is usually done at either one or both homes of the parents, depending on where parents live. If parents are in different states, sometimes we don’t necessarily need to travel, although we can if we need to. If a child is having struggles in spending time with one parent or hasn’t seen the other parent in quite a long time, [00:17:00] then I would not be forcing that kind of interaction. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to insist on doing a home visit to observe a child, particularly a teenager, with a parent who that teenager is resistant to for whatever reason.
So oftentimes we’re only doing a home visit at one home where that child lives. I am extremely passionate and committed to the idea that these home visits or the interviews with teens, with children really of any age, need to be at their homes in person. I have once in a while done Zoom meetings if it’s urgent and we can’t get me out to the actual physical location fast enough or the schedules are not aligning.
But it is extremely limiting to do these by Zoom. The initial parent interviews can be by Zoom. That’s not nearly as big of a deal, but the interviews with children I believe must be in person. It is just really powerful to sit with a kid in that child’s [00:18:00] room, take a walk with that child in that child’s neighborhood, see the kinds of things in their homes, see the decorations that they have and the things that are in their room, see what they’re reading or playing on video games. There’s just so much that you can get that you can’t get in a Zoom situation.
I do always explain in this step what is the best interest role versus just being a child’s attorney. I’ve had children say to me, “Oh, I’m so glad my daddy got me a lawyer,” or, “My mommy got me a lawyer.” And I have to explain to them that representing their best interests takes in a lot of different things, not just that person’s opinion, the child’s opinion. I get all sorts of feedback from people about that.
I’ve had kids say that’s really selfish, that’s how it works. I’ve had kids say that they get it because they are left to their own devices, they might not make all the best choices, or they understand that there’s some things that they have autonomy over and there’s other things that they need to be told that they need to do.
For example, maybe I wouldn’t go to [00:19:00] school every day if you didn’t make me, I wouldn’t do my homework, or I wouldn’t eat my vegetables, or any number of examples that you can give a teen or any kid, and that they’ll laugh and acknowledge that maybe they wouldn’t always necessarily make the best choices for themselves.
I explain that to them so they understand it. I also always scope whether, again, we have DV/IPV/child abuse. I’m not doing forensic interviews with these kids but I am trying to assess what t their lived experiences are, and it will direct my steps depending on the kind of information I get from them.
I also am a mandatory reporter, meaning that just like a doctor or a teacher in my role, I do have to report child abuse if I see it or hear about it. So that is something that I do. I don’t re-report it if it is something that has been reported previously or it’s old information. But if it’s something that is new or something that has not been reported in the past, I definitely would be making calls to [00:20:00] Child Protective Services for reporting that situation.
My goal during this time is to build trust with the child or children to understand the perspectives that they have and to give empathy. I really work hard to give hope. A lot of these kids have seen a lot of different professionals. Sometimes they’ve seen guardians ad litem (GAL) in Colorado who handle dependency and neglect work, and they come represent the kids – either their best interests or their voices, depending on the age. In Colorado I often have kids who have had child custody evaluations before and they often are quite dug in that they want to stay in the corner when it comes to their disfavored parent. A lot of times they’ve resisted for quite a long time seeing the parent that they don’t prefer, and they feel very defensive about this. And so, what I am trying to do is explain to them that they can come out of the corner that they’re in, and that we are not automatically heading into a realm of 50/50 parenting time.
That’s what they’re all really [00:21:00] concerned about: “I don’t want to have to do 50/50. I don’t want to have to do overnights,” which is how we view parenting time in Colorado. “I don’t want this; I don’t want that.” It’s a whole litany of what they don’t want. And instead, I talked to them about their best interests.
If you have a broken relationship with your mother, how is that going to affect you as an adult? How is that going to affect you as a parent? How will it affect you in your future relationships? How is it affecting you now? We can’t just put our hands over our eyes and our hands over our ears and just pretend that we’re not seeing or hearing or feeling any of these things.
These kids have heard and felt and seen so very much in their family units, and they’re willing to talk about that. And they’re usually willing, I’d say 99% of the time, they’re willing to accept that empathy and accept the perspective from someone who is saying, “I just am trying to help you to get out of the corner and to try to work on this relationship in a way that meets your needs, but is what I would call a win-win.”
And [00:22:00] I do often describe it that way to kids like this is a win-win. Because almost always when a CLR comes on I suppose there’s some cases I’ve come on where I’ve got a very young child- a baby even. And in that it’s obviously quite different. I’m not talking to the child then if the child is an infant, but I am observing, and I’ll give you an example of that.
I’ve come up with solutions, for example, about food and what kind of milk brand that the parents are giving when they’re in different homes. Sometimes we have teenage parents who really have not thought about the fact that this kid’s schedule is really important and that they’re making this poor kid be jet lagged between their two homes in every possible way from bedtime routines, bath routines, food routines – everything is completely different.
So we get around it that way or we get at the heart of it that way. Sometimes we have situations with young elementary age kids that are a little bit different where I’m, for example, working on individualized education plans, IEPs, [00:23:00] and conflicts between parents about schools or autistic children with ADHD.
How are we handling those sorts of situations? Those are I’d say the minority. I’d say maybe that’s about 15% perhaps of my work. The rest of the work is with teenagers and people that are resistant, kids that are resistant to seeing one parent generally. And so that’s a huge part of navigating these children’s voices as they get more autonomy, which happens naturally as they hit adolescence.
And that’s just a natural part of their experience and we want them to become more autonomous and more thinking, more able to express their opinions. But in a divorce situation or a family law type situation, it often leads to serious conflict because the parents are already generally at odds and therefore this kid can weaponize that a little bit by picking sides and preferring one parent over the other. That happens even when we are in intact families. It happens much more in the [00:24:00] divorce setting. So, what do we do about that?
When I’m talking to kids about it being a win-win to work with me, to trust me, and to start working on solutions with their disfavored parent, I explain to them that one win is that the parent with whom the child doesn’t want to engage gets better. And that parent can be a much better parent and much better co-parent and be able to hear the child and be able to be reasonable about the child’s wishes and all the things that the child wishes that parent would be. Now some of that is very aspirational and really not going to happen probably, but it is possible. Some things kids want they are not going to get because the things they want are unreasonable. For example, “I wish my other parent would let me just play video games around the clock.” I explain that’s not what we’re talking about, but we are talking about helping improve the situation from the child’s view, maybe improving the parent’s approach. So, let’s say it’s a win if the parent is able to produce an outcome the child sees as positive.
After working with me and working with therapists and things like that, the other [00:25:00] win in the win-win is that even if the parent doesn’t change at all but the child has made the effort, it really does help the child with teenager long-term be healthy. Because that child will have been able to address directly how they feel with that parent who they are not favoring.
They’re able to do that not through their favored parent, but directly with the disfavored parent. And they’re doing that in a careful therapeutic process. Almost always, almost all of these teen cases require some level of very careful therapy. And if it doesn’t get better then and we end up in court, it does really help the situation from the judge’s perspective that the child has tried.
And that makes a big difference when we’re figuring out what those next orders are going to look like because it’s very common – I’d say much more common than not – that a disfavored parent is blaming the other [00:26:00] parent for “alienating.” We’ve talked about that a lot in the podcast for being “enmeshed” with the child, for doing all sorts of “gatekeeping,” – all these buzz words that can become very weaponized about what the favored parent is doing wrong, and that it is all that parent’s fault.
Now, usually in these therapeutic processes, I’m trying to get all the people to therapy so that favored parent can understand too what he or she is doing that might not be helpful and that might be fostering these problems. But by the teenager going to a therapeutic setting and working with one or both parents, it really does defuse the possibility that the child is going to be forced by the court in a litigation context because the child’s just being so obstinate.
It also usually means that the disfavored parent isn’t going to successfully be able to say, “This is all of the favored parent’s fault.” Teens resonate with that win-win scenario, and they’re usually willing to do it. I’d say in all of my cases – well, [00:27:00] there has been one child who has refused to go with this scenario that I’m explaining, and even that child did end up doing some therapy and ended up with a good outcome – but almost always the kids are willing to look at me and say, “Yeah, I get it. I understand that is what I probably need to do.”
STEP FOUR: Negotiation Mode
Step four, after I’ve met with the child and I’ve talked to the parents and I’ve done the deep dive on the docket, then I go into negotiation mode.
And this is a very critical part of how I do this work and what I would really like to teach to other child’s legal representatives so that we can actually be providing that great level of curated solutions that a really solid CLR can provide. Essentially, the CLR is what I would consider in a pivot seat, in a swivel chair in the middle of everyone, even though you’re an attorney representing the best interests.
[00:28:00] Now, if you’ve done your job right, the CLR really is postured as the person who has a rational perspective to bring to each person and has been granted permission really by building these initial relationships to be able to make recommendations that make sense and that move things forward. And that can really take pressure off of this family system and move in a direction of effective, healing solutions. And the approach is going to vary based on case needs, based on each family, based on dynamics, based on the presence or absence of domestic violence and or child abuse. And it usually involves very nuanced conversations with people in the case that are curated depending on who is on the case and what these needs are.
So, for example, if you have one very litigious attorney on board, one might [00:29:00] as the CLR choose to talk to that litigious attorney first before talking to the attorneys together if there are two attorneys and maybe before even talking to the parents again. Perhaps the best approach is to talk to that litigious attorney to try to get that attorney kind of won over to your side or to your approach and to soften the ground for that solution.
Sometimes these attorneys need to feel like they’re part of the solution, and sometimes you need them to be part of the solution. Sometimes they have good ideas to bring to the table that can really help you navigate the best ways to push this family forward with good ideas. And so being respectful of those attorneys, having those conversations and testing the ground, is part of what a good negotiator does, and that is what I’m doing in this step.
It’s always very intentional how I’m doing it. Sometimes I’ll do a Zoom with both attorneys or both parents. Sometimes I’ll have a conversation with the parent I think is [00:30:00] more entrenched than the other. Sometimes I’ll have a conversation with a child, with a parent if I think that dynamic would help.
I’m doing whatever I think I need to do for the next step in front of me to be able to bring everybody into a solutions-focused realm. Usually this results then in temporary stipulations, and there’s always a court date in front of us. CLRs are appointed when there are motions, meaning requests of the court being made. So there’s some live activity happening in the case, and I’m almost always trying to push that date out. I don’t want to get rid of it completely because having a court date actually looming in the future is quite helpful to negotiations, and it’s quite helpful to push a little bit when necessary this entire process forward.
Also, if anyone’s worked with attorneys or the courts, but especially attorneys, they’re so busy that they end up calendar-driven toward whatever [00:31:00] fire is coming next. And that usually is associated with a date that’s associated with the court. So having those dates coming really helps elevate and keep the heat on when it needs to be on in order to have expectations that we’re moving into new phases or we’re pushing into additional steps and the like.
And so sometimes I’ve done things like ask for bifurcations of cases, meaning let’s say we’re in a pre-decree case and the people really want to get divorced and to split their assets and debts, but we’re not really ready yet for a parenting time order. And it would be more disruptive to the children and the parents to have a situation forced on them with a permanent order. So let’s go ahead and bifurcate it, meaning cut it in half and do the finances and the divorce first, which I have the right to be a part of if I’m an attorney on the case, but I almost always opt to not be a part of because I’m trying to save people money and focus squarely on [00:32:00] children’s issues.
Taking the position that, of course we think child support is important and we of course expect that people are going to have a roof over their heads and things of that nature, but other than that, I really don’t need to get into the weeds of how they’re going to divide up the credit card debt or who’s going to keep the house or things like that. Sometimes I do but usually I don’t have to. So that saves the party some money and keeps me focused just on the children’s side.
But we might bifurcate to give this time to work, we will ask for the appointments of particular therapists. Please check in on my other podcasts about how important it’s to find the right therapist, because you can’t just pick them off insurance lists and they can’t just have regular training. It’s very specific nuanced family systems work that needs to be done. And it can be done in a really problematic way. If you’re not careful, it can actually do more injury. So it’s very important that you pick the right psychologists, therapists, social workers to do this work. And you can listen to any one of my podcasts about this. We’ve got several that are about the psychology [00:33:00] behind this and how to pick the right therapist. So check that out.
But essentially we’re going into negotiation mode and trying to come up with a temporary agreement to make this whole situation better.
STEP FIVE: Therapeutic work & CLR ongoing engagement
Step five then becomes therapeutic work with CLR engagement.
I will put a caveat here that not all kids are old enough really for therapy, though I think most therapists will tell you almost any age kid could do play therapy or the like. But the kind of real intense therapeutic work I’m talking about here is for resist/refuse, which we call Parent Child Contact Problems (PCCP), to cover the universe of reasons that parents and children are not seeing one another. This is mostly about teens and adolescents, I would say from about 11 years old or so, 10 or 11, all the way up to 18. That’s the age for this intense therapeutic work, which I call step five.
I will note what I told you before about the people with the little [00:34:00] babies, the teenagers who have kids, the maybe unmarried parents who had a baby, and they’re really struggling even with small things about what milk brand to have a child consume. Those are other solutions we can give. And this same step in step five can really help.
It might be parent coaching, for example. They could get a parent coach on as part of the stipulation to see if the parents can, how they’re going to do on co-parenting and how they can align or not be aligned on particular parts about raising a very small child. And that could be step five in a case like that.
So it’s generally a time where we are observing how the parents are doing before we get to more final orders for these children. But generally, in most of the cases involving CLRs, it’s going to involve this therapeutic engagement. And essentially I would go to that teenager, that adolescent, and say, “I did what I promised. I got a great therapist for you. Here’s who this therapist is. I [00:35:00] convinced your parents. The parents worked with me on this, and everyone is a team [insert teenager’s name], and you are being heard.” We say, “This is not about overnights. It’s not about you being in the middle of the room, 50/50. It’s about working on the relationship to make it better.”
That also involves me talking to the parents frequently because they get out over their skis upset about things. Especially the parent that isn’t seeing the child as much or at all is very frustrated with the time that it’s taking or the lack of progress that is perceived. Sometimes we have the more favored parent being resistant, like refusing to sign up for sessions or not prioritizing going to these sessions. And so, I generally have both parents and one or more children engaged. And that also helps the entire team understand that it’s not just one parent’s fault and it truly isn’t one parent’s fault.
We have to recognize in these difficult [00:36:00] dynamics that the role of both parents has contributed, even if the relationship is more fractured between one parent and one child. There are a lot of things going on that the favored parent could be doing differently to make this better. And we have to really consider both the parents’ roles in this.
Oftentimes if we have intimate partner violence, domestic violence, child abuse exposure, then it’s different than this. And I have a bunch of different episodes that are about Kayden’s Law and how we handle that, how our statutes are different in that realm. I’m really not talking about those, although I will say that in some cases where we’ve had children who’ve been exposed to these sorts of things, they have willingly, not by force, but willingly gone and been able to spend time doing some therapy that has greatly helped them, and it may not have resulted in actual time with their with their abuser or their person who’s being accused of abuse, but it has [00:37:00] actually been quite helpful to them and to their future adulthood. And so, it’s just really a matter of what you consider success looking like. There’s a lot of different ways that success can be measured. And really, none of this is about forcing kids. It’s about helping them understand why it’s important and doing this very carefully in a very curated, nuanced way.
Okay, so then I mentioned that we have to navigate parents’ and often their attorneys’, if they have an attorney, frustrations as to speed or lack of speed. That’s a very common part of this step. And then I’m constantly in communication, usually at least monthly with the therapist. Sometimes I will also do group therapeutic zooms where I’m checking in with multiple therapists on a case or school officials so that we can have communication across an entire team of people, which can be very helpful.
That helps when there are individual therapists, school professionals, the family system therapist. Of course, everyone has to sign releases for that to [00:38:00] happen. But it can be very probative and helpful, even individual therapists for the parents, to have a release to talk to them. They don’t even need to share any information directly back to me, but I can share information about what I’m seeing on the case and what I’m learning from the family system therapist. And that can be very probative to the individual therapist who works with parents or the other children. Often there are lots of cooks in the kitchen, but I am trying to help get people on the same page as much as possible. And then I’m also going during this phase and dealing with participation: Do we have enough engagement? Is it consistent? Is everyone participating? Is the kid going, what are the hiccups? Is there a way I can help? Is the therapist getting paid? Things like that.
STEP SIX: Court Engagement
Okay. Then step six, we have court engagement. The court is a resource for anybody on the case. But as an attorney, the CLR has a position where I can ask for regular status conferences with the court.[00:39:00]
I will say people who are judges and judicial officers who have experience in working with children working as guardians ad litem or working in other roles in the juvenile courts generally have a much better sense of the importance of this active case management than do people who’ve come out of the district attorney’s office from criminal spaces or from even just civil litigation who don’t tend to view themselves as much in the problem solving nuanced role that is most appropriate to family courts, and that’s something that we’re constantly trying to help and change because a really strong judicial officer in this role is incredibly important and incredibly helpful to doing what’s right for these families. And I will just note as an aside that many other countries that do this better than the United States have much more actively engaged judicial officers and more actively engaged systems that have more eyes on triaging these difficult cases and getting them the help that they [00:40:00] need. We have very little help for people in divorce situations. We have a ton of help for people in dependency neglect, but not in the entire landscape of divorce and family courts. So regular status conferences are very important, and I think if it’s a judicial officer who isn’t used to doing that, it is important to start to train those judicial officers about why that is important.
Again, it lights a fire under everyone with a fixed date in mind for an update, and it’s clearly in the best interests of children to be able to move things along. Also, with more child-centric judges, mental health professionals, therapists, can appear and give updates, particularly if you get that cleared with the other attorneys, if there are attorneys, or with the parents, you can have that person appear and just say how it’s going.
That can be very helpful. It also, by having these status conferences, provides appropriate pressure on that family system to allow the CLR to press for a variety of [00:41:00] action from each person. It provides just enough turning the flame up on the teens, sometimes on the therapists, the parents, the attorneys, to try to move things forward.
And so, it really does give the just right amount of pressure to not just let this sit forever and not move forward. It also gives the CLR a venue to ask for more action informally. At any point, I can file motions, I can file my own restriction motions, any motion that another attorney can file, I can file.
But often that informal status conference is a way in which we can get agreements from attorneys just prior and have the court take limited action without having to file for formal briefing to the court.
STEP SEVEN: Keeping it on the rails
Okay, step seven. In between these status conferences, the CLR again keeps navigating in this pivot chair with the therapists, with attorneys, with parents, with a teenager. I give teenagers [00:42:00] my and kids, my cell phone number, and they’re able to text and update me. I will do ongoing zooms with them. I try to avoid having to go out in person again because it can be expensive to do that just for the travel time and all of those things.
But I do sometimes do more than one home visit and certainly am able to do that as needed. Sometimes I’ll go meet with parents in person to have conversations. Sometimes we’ll just set zooms. I will almost always do monthly discussions with the therapist, more frequently as needed, and I just provide an ongoing buffer to allow the therapist to have the space to get work done, and that is mostly done by the CLR diffusing flareups from everybody else. So when somebody’s getting frustrated or they want to file a motion or something happened at school, or something happened at an exchange, I’m able to come in and tamp that down so that the flareups are not exploding and we’re able to continue on the path that we’re on, asking [00:43:00] attorneys, for example, “Let’s not go do a deposition; let’s not go file more motions; let’s come together and have a conversation.” Again, I make sure the therapist is getting paid, which is a big deal. And then I consider myself an ongoing neutralizer to just try to keep it all on the rails when people are getting frustrated or impatient or disheartened, discouraged, mad, fill in the blank, and so on and so forth.
I’m also an ongoing reality checker with all of this, as to the time and patience required or the seriousness of the situation. So, for example, if we do have a child that’s witnessed, for example, domestic violence, the child wants to work on the relationship but has a lot of issues on what is going on with the parent that they’ve struggled with or with whom they’ve observed domestic violence happening or experienced it themselves, the parent often needs to understand that this is a very serious situation and it’s based on the lived experiences of this child. My coming in and explaining that to the parent, [00:44:00] sometimes over and over again, can be very important and can be very impactful so that we have expectations set that we’re not going to be able to just push this kid to see you.
And in fact, the statutes state that we have to take this child’s voice very strongly and that there are a lot of resets of expectations that need to be done by this parent based on what this child has experienced. Other times I am a reality checker to the child, for example, “You really are able to just go to dinner with your parent.”
This is not in a domestic violence situation. But in other situations where we have not experienced that, a child might say, “I’ll go to dinner, but that’s all I’ll do.” And we try that, and then I find out that the child is just refusing to make any eye contact at dinner, for example. And the child has already been in therapy, and we have an extremely obstinate situation going on.
I will then sometimes be able to then go talk to the child and say, “Why are we doing this?” Sometimes I’ll talk to the child with the therapist, “Why are we doing this? Why [00:45:00]do you feel like you’re acting that way?” And sometimes, not always, but sometimes it’s that the child is playing this game with the parent, and they realize that they need to give a little bit more than they’re giving, yet they’re stuck in this obstinate space that they don’t really need to be. So I will explain, “Okay, if we’re going to continue with just the dinners, what can we do that will allow you to engage in a way that is more meaningful than just putting your head on the table and refusing to eat or make eye contact or anything? What could we do? Are you willing to order an appetizer, for example, and sit there for 20 minutes and have a conversation with your parent?” There’s a lot of negotiation and autonomy, agency-building, going on that teens love where they have choices within a certain range of possibilities.
So that’s the kind of reality checking I do. And then when the parent is upset that we’re still stuck on dinners, I am able to talk to that parent about why and talk to the therapist sometimes or get the parent and the therapist on together to have those conversations and in a nuanced, [00:46:00] curated, relationally attuned way, explain what’s happening, or go, for example, to the favored parent and explain why it seems that parent is thwarting the success of the other parent’s relationship. So again, it is very nuanced. What we do depends very much on what’s happening in that case.
STEP NINE: Pushing when appropriate
Step nine is that sometimes I have to become someone that pushes a little bit more, and that’s only if the therapist signals that it is appropriate to the mental health needs of the child. Sometimes I have to get with the favored parent to ask them to push a little harder or to back off a little bit to recognize the impact that they might be having in good or bad ways.
Or sometimes I need to get with the child and ask, “Is it time to have an overnight? Are you speaking in therapy? Do you need to take time to heal? How do we navigate this carefully? Are you willing to do any type of time with your parent? Can your parent come to graduation or an orchestra concert,” et cetera.
Sometimes I need to push attorneys. This can come in the form of trying to stop or start litigating, [00:47:00] depending on the severity of the situation.
Oftentimes I’m trying to get parents to attorneys to hit the brakes on litigation, but sometimes I have to say, “I think it’s time that we have to go to court.” I’m always trying to negotiate what the timing of this is.
STEP TEN: Pushing for settlement
Then step 10, I really am trying to settle the case in its entirety. Now, sometimes we might be six months in, we might be a year in at this point. It sometimes takes some time. It depends on the situation; it depends on the therapeutic care that’s happening and the severity of everything. But I’m always working to try to solve these situations peacefully by stipulation, by attending or having my own settlement conference or attending mediation. It often includes some kind of negotiation that requires the team to do something, but, again, it’s within a range of possibilities. It’s usually something that the child has the ability to make some choices within a range of options. [00:48:00] We’re able to continue to move things forward as things get better. Again, I always talk about curating a solution toward that particular child’s needs.
STEP ELEVEN: Litigation
In step 11 when all else fails, the CLR does provide a litigation role. And when we have to litigate – which is a last resort for me but it is something that I’ve had to do many times – the CLR has a unique voice in court. As an attorney for the best interests of the child, I have all the tools available to me of any other attorney in the case.
If you have two parents and then the CLR, the hearing time would get divided in three parts. I generally don’t take a third of the time because I usually have one parent at that point who is basically calling the witnesses who I would choose to call if that parent didn’t bring those witnesses, for example, a therapist or the family systems therapist or teacher, or somebody in the family. [00:49:00]. I can proffer my own evidence, meaning give my own evidence, submit my own evidence, all with the same rules that apply to everybody else. I cross, I do open and closing, I participate in the trial management certificates where we put our positions in. Those are called joint trial management certificates in Colorado. I can take part in any way that any other attorney can in court. I do not testify. I’m not a witness; I don’t take the stand. I do have to file my own motions if I want particular things to happen in court for. So, for example, if I want the judge to interview the child, if I want a motion in limine, for example, another Latin term, if I want to limit evidence for some reason, if I want to have somebody testify or be precluded from testifying, I also can file my own motions at any point in the case.
If I need to, like I’ve said before, to restrict, to modify decision making or parenting time, or to acknowledge the impact of domestic violence and child abuse and invoke [00:50:00] elements of Kayden’s Law, I can file motions toward that towards those topics. And I must determine within the evidentiary rules how to get the child’s perspective in.
Now there are some, again, I think more child-centric judges who are more understanding that one of the factors that they have to consider is the best interests of the children, and that includes the, excuse me – in the best interest of the children analysis, it includes what the child thinks. So many judges find ways to allow me to just state on the record what the child’s voice has said in this situation, but others will not allow that, and then I have to do this through more typical rules of civil procedure and rules of evidence.
That really is my problem to figure out. But I would appreciate that we move toward more specialty family courts. We’ve got some different changes happening to the Colorado rules that are going to allow for a little bit looser approach in some cases in the family cases, [00:51:00] which I think will be very helpful and do a very good job of allowing the judicial officer to at least consider some of these things without all the typical trappings of regular civil litigation approaches.
So those are the steps, 11 steps, as to how I handle the CLR role.
Also Critical: Fundamental Rights of Parents
I will just add that as an aside to this – and it’s not an aside at all, it’s very critical – parents have rights, they have fundamental rights to parent their children. And I think it’s really important as we talk about the CLR role, that is an important thing that I have to constantly be explaining to teenagers.
It surprises and frustrates teens. They think that they should have autonomy as individual humans. And there is certainly a propensity in a lot of places to give more voice to children, to have those rights to him or herself to make choices for themselves. But that is not how most of these states are postured. It’s not how Colorado is postured when it comes to divorce.
So as I do all of this work, we have to couch it within the fundamental rights of parents in these specific court actions. [00:52:00] I attempt with teens and their parents, however, to encourage that as we navigate these realities as to fundamental rights, we all work hard to do what is best for the teen’s future, not necessarily what is about parents’ rights. I explain to the teens that, yes, by doing this work, the court is allowing your parent to exercise fundamental parenting rights but attempting to do so carefully. I explain that the court is allowing your parent to exercise that by being involved or trying to be involved in your life, which the domestic court has to allow. This is not a court that terminates parenting rights at any point. Teens often come in initially saying to me, “I’m X age, so I get to decide;” or, “ I saw on TikTok that I get to decide,” or, “My bestie told me it’s time for me to decide,” or, “My mom said I get to decide.” I have to explain to them that these are not true.
I give the reality check that we are going to try to meet the teen’s needs while also meeting their parents’ fundamental rights to parent. And I explain that we’re going to try to do this in a way that gives the teen as much autonomy as possible. And we’re going try [00:53:00] to stay away from the language about overnights and 50/50 parenting time and try to build the relationship and then see what flows from that.
So that is really what we’re doing as the CLR specifically in Colorado.
Other Approaches Nationally & Internationally
I will just point out that there are a lot of other ways around the country and the world that people are handling getting children’s voices heard. I’ll just give you a few.
In New Zealand, a lawyer for the child is standard. In Australia, which we’ve talked about on the show already, family consultants are a regularly every case interview children and prepare reports. This is true in Canada as well. I’ve had Dr. Michael Saini of Canada on the podcast, and he has talked about the voice of the child reports. They do interviews with the office of child’s lawyer or have court appointed professionals.
In Sweden, social services gathers the child’s views and reports that to the court and emphasizes the child’s right to be heard under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s interesting that all of those countries have much bigger social [00:54:00] states compared with that of the United States.
The United States obviously has a big social state as well, but not nearly as widespread social services as those countries when you’re comparing Sweden and Canada, for example. In the UK, there’s something called the children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and they assess and report the child’s views, but children rarely can speak to the judge. In Germany, though, I think judges are obligated to interview children who are 14 years and up, and they often appoint child advocates to represent the kids. So that’s what’s happening internationally.
Again, I would explain in the United States there are a lot of different things happening, and I think I’ll save this for another time, but I will say in New York, the attorney who is appointed is to represent the child’s wishes. Even if that attorney does not think that it’s in the child’s best interests, the judges have to consider, but don’t have to follow those wishes.
I think that’s the [00:55:00] most extreme – I don’t mean extreme in a bad way necessarily – state that is out there doing child’s wishes, child’s voice representation. In California, kids 14 and up have the right to address the court unless a judge deems that would be detrimental. And then they also have input through child custody evaluators, minors counsel, or family court services mediators. Although I have been told by a lot of people, again, this is not universal, but that the minor’s counsel can sometimes be considered not as active as the way I’m explaining that I find it to be best to do it as we do in Colorado, or at least as I approach the CLR role in Colorado.
Defining Success
I do think that lastly, I just want to indicate that we really need to think about what success looks like because success is not necessarily what you expect when you first go into these cases. Success is different for each family.
I think success is that the child feels heard and has had an opportunity to [00:56:00] engage in a supportive therapeutic process that promotes healthy development, healthy adulthood. It’s also successful if we can get cases to settle and to stop the toxicity in court. And it’s success if relationships are built in a way that starts tearing down what has injured the kids before or what has caused them an inability to have a relationship.
Especially if we’re not talking about domestic violence or child abuse, we’re just talking about a different type of parent child contact problem, success can be having the ability for that parent to have a normative relationship in a lot of important events and times, even if that doesn’t lead to equal parenting time or to, again, overnights, which is what we’re pretty fixated on in Colorado.
It is still about building a relationship, and that is very powerful and can be very successful, and that matters a lot more long term than where that child is sleeping. And then of course if we have a kid who’s been the victim of being in an environment where [00:57:00] there’s domestic violence, then making sure that child has had the ability to safely and in a supportive way be protected and for the reality of what that child faced to be considered, addressing contact to the extent that is therapeutically safe for that child, that there isn’t force, and that the parent understands what the impact has been.
Whether or not the parent admits that there’s been domestic violence, the truth is in the eyes of the beholder a lot of times for these kids. The child needs to feel heard, even if some of that is something that they have learned from their more favored parent. If some of that does come from enmeshment or loyalty to that parent, still being able to be heard and express him or herself in the therapeutic context can really be something that aids that child’s future when done in a careful trauma-informed way. That doesn’t mean we’re heading back into [00:58:00] parenting time but it does mean that we can call this success in a way that might be different for that particular child and that particular family.
So with all of that is what it looks like for me at least, to do child’s legal representation.
I will say, if you’re interested in a CLR appointment, I think it’s important not to be doing consultations with the CLR. If I get an intake in my firm Children First Family Law, that seems like it would be best suited for a CLR appointment, I do not do that kind of intake because I think it’s important to stay neutral for both parents.
We would just respond to the person who reached out to my firm and would indicate this case like a CLR case. Probably in the future, I will send people to this podcast to hear what my approach looks like to see if it’s good for that particular family. Parents can always ask the court for a CLR directly. If you have attorneys, you can talk to them about whether the CLR role is a good option.
I hope that you’ve been able to [00:59:00] see that it really can be quite nuanced and problem solving and curated in a way that I think truly can help kids and their parents flourish despite the messy area of family law.
Thanks for spending time with me today, and if you have questions or ideas for other podcast episodes, I hope you’ll send those. If you’re a parent, I hope you can do your divorce (and if you’re an attorney, represent parents) in a way that makes it more possible, not less, for kids especially, but their parents also, to flourish.
Krista is licensed in Colorado and Wyoming. So if you are in those states and seek legal services, please feel free to reach out via ChildrenFirstFamilylaw.com that is our website where everyone can find additional resources to help navigate family law as always, be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.