Do Children Have A Say In Colorado?
When a parenting dispute drags on, most parents eventually hear some version of the same claim from a coworker, a relative, or a message board: once a child turns twelve, or fourteen, or sixteen, the child gets to pick. In Colorado that is not the law, and it has never been the law.
Colorado has no age at which a child chooses which parent to live with. What Colorado has instead is a maturity test, a short list of formal channels through which a child's preference reaches the judge, and a set of standards that changed in 2024 and again in August 2026. This article walks through all three, with citations to the current statutes and the current Chief Justice Directive.
CONTENTS
- The Short Answer: No, And There Is No Magic Age
- What "Sufficiently Mature" Means Under Colorado Law
- How A Child's Preference Actually Reaches The Judge
- What Changed In 2024 And 2026
- Changing An Existing Parenting Order Because A Child Wants To Move
- When A Child's Preference Stops Mattering
- How This Works In El Paso And Teller Counties
- What To Do If Your Child Asks To Live With You
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Talk With A Colorado Springs Family Law Attorney
- Sources
THE SHORT ANSWER: NO, AND THERE IS NO MAGIC AGE
A child in Colorado cannot choose which parent to live with. The court decides, and it decides under the best interests standard in C.R.S. 14-10-124.
The child's preference does appear in that statute, but as one item on a list. Section 14-10-124(1.5)(a)(II) directs the court to consider "the wishes of the child if he or she is sufficiently mature to express reasoned and independent preferences as to the parenting time schedule." The same subsection tells the court to consider all relevant factors, so the list is a floor rather than a ceiling.
Read the surrounding language and the hierarchy becomes clear. The court allocates parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child, "giving paramount consideration to the child's safety and the physical, mental, and emotional conditions and needs of the child." A preference is evidence. Safety and developmental needs are the priority the statute names.
Nothing in that section sets an age. There is no point at which a Colorado child's preference becomes binding, and no point at which it can be ignored either. What changes with age is how much weight the preference is likely to carry, and that is a judgment call the trial court makes case by case.
One more requirement is worth knowing. Under 14-10-124(1.7), in contested hearings on final orders allocating parental responsibilities, the court must make findings on the record about the factors it considered and why its allocation serves the child's best interests. A parent who believes the court gave a teenager's stated wishes no consideration at all has a record to point to.
WHAT "SUFFICIENTLY MATURE" MEANS UNDER COLORADO LAW
The statute does not define maturity, but it does supply two qualifying words that do most of the work: the preference must be "reasoned" and it must be "independent."
Reasoned means the child can connect the preference to something real about their own life and wellbeing. A fifteen-year-old who explains that one home is twenty minutes from her school and her job, and that the commute from the other home has cost her two shifts and a club season, is giving a reasoned preference. A fifteen-year-old who says she just likes it better there is not saying much the court can weigh.
Independent means the preference originated with the child. Colorado's own standards for court investigators treat this as a live risk rather than a theoretical one. The Chief Justice Directive governing child and family investigators instructs them to ask non-suggestive questions, with awareness that a child's stated views may vary over time or may reflect fear, intimidation, or manipulation.
Two related rules limit how a preference gets used. Under 14-10-124(2), the court will not consider conduct of a party that does not affect that party's relationship to the child. Under 14-10-124(3), the court cannot presume that either parent is better suited because of that parent's sex.
A newer provision points the same direction. Subsection (1.5)(a.5), added in 2024, directs the court to strive not to treat biased information or recommendations as a relevant factor, including bias regarding religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, culture, race, ethnicity, national origin, or disability.
HOW A CHILD'S PREFERENCE ACTUALLY REACHES THE JUDGE
Colorado does not put children on the witness stand to testify against a parent. It routes a child's voice through four recognized channels instead, and the choice among them has real consequences for cost, timing, and how much of the child's life gets examined.
A Child and Family Investigator
A child and family investigator, usually called a CFI, is a neutral third person appointed by the court under C.R.S. 14-10-116.5 to investigate and report on issues the appointment order specifically defines. The CFI works for the court, not for the parent who pays. The purpose of the investigation is to assist in determining the child's best interests, with the child's safety always paramount.
For parents asking about a child's preference, one sentence in that statute matters more than any other. Section 14-10-116.5(2)(b) provides that the child's wishes, if expressed, must be disclosed in the CFI's written report. That is a statutory requirement, not a matter of the investigator's discretion.
The Chief Justice Directive reinforces it. The CFI's report should set forth the children's wishes even when the CFI's own recommendations differ from those wishes. And while the CFI must consider what the child wants, the CFI need not adopt it unless doing so serves the child's best interests.
Cost is capped by directive rather than left to the market. Under the version of Chief Justice Directive 04-08 that took effect on August 26, 2026, the presumptive maximum fee for a privately paid CFI's investigation and report is $3,309 per appointment. Testimony and preparation time carry a separate presumptive maximum of $500 per appointment.
Neither cap is absolute, but exceeding one is not casual. The court must approve the excess in advance, in a written order with specific findings about the extraordinary circumstances that justify it, and that requirement applies even when both parents stipulate to a higher fee.
A Parental Responsibilities Evaluator
A parental responsibilities evaluation under C.R.S. 14-10-127 is the broader and more intrusive option. It is conducted by a qualified evaluator selected from a statewide roster, typically a licensed mental health professional, and it can reach much further into a family than a CFI investigation is permitted to go.
The evaluator may consult any person who may have information about the child and the child's potential parenting arrangements, and on court order may refer the child to other professionals for diagnosis. Fees are handled differently as well: the court may cap an evaluator's fees pursuant to a chief justice directive, and the CFI presumptive maximums above do not govern.
Evaluations are generally reserved for higher-conflict cases or cases with deeper issues, which is also why a CFI is the more common starting point in a routine parenting dispute.
A Child's Legal Representative
Under C.R.S. 14-10-116, the court may appoint a legal representative of the child. The distinction parents most often miss is that this attorney represents the child's best interests, not the child's stated wishes, and those are not always the same thing.
The Colorado Supreme Court addressed the point directly in In re Hartley, 886 P.2d 665 (Colo. 1994), holding that the statute does not require a child's wishes to be represented by an attorney the child chooses. The court reasoned that the obligations of the appointed representative, combined with the court's own ability to interview the child, already give the child enough opportunity to be heard.
The same person cannot serve as both the child's legal representative and the court's child and family investigator in a case. Section 14-10-116.5(1) prohibits it.
An Interview With The Judge In Chambers
This is the channel most parents picture, and it is the one whose rules changed most recently. C.R.S. 14-10-126 now provides that upon a motion, the court may interview the child in chambers to ascertain the child's wishes as to the allocation of parental responsibilities.
Four features of the current statute are worth stating plainly. The interview now requires a motion. The court may permit counsel or a licensed legal paraprofessional to be present. A record must be made and must become part of the record in the case. And the court must make findings in its order explaining why it granted or denied the request.
Subsection (2) adds a priority rule. In deciding whether to grant a request to interview a child in chambers, the court must give paramount consideration to cases involving an allegation made by a child regarding domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, or child sexual abuse.
Interviews remain discretionary. Colorado courts have held that the section does not mandate interviews, in In re Rinow, 624 P.2d 365 (Colo. App. 1981), and again in In re Turek, 817 P.2d 615 (Colo. App. 1991). In In re Custody of C.J.S., 37 P.3d 479 (Colo. App. 2001), the court of appeals found no abuse of discretion where the trial court declined an interview after a prior interview, filed reports, and hearing testimony.
One protection catches parents by surprise. A parent has no right to cross-examine the child at the interview, under In re Agner, 659 P.2d 53 (Colo. App. 1982). The in-chambers interview is a conversation between the judge and the child, not a deposition.
WHAT CHANGED IN 2024 AND 2026
A great deal of the parenting-preference material published by Colorado firms and legal directories describes the law as it stood before August 2024. Three changes matter for this topic, and all three are easy to verify.
| Change | Authority | Effective |
|---|---|---|
| An in-chambers interview of a child now requires a motion, and the court must make findings explaining why it granted or denied the request | C.R.S. 14-10-126(1), amended by HB 24-1350 and HB 24-1291 | August 7, 2024 |
| The child's wishes, if expressed, must be disclosed in the CFI's written report | C.R.S. 14-10-116.5(2)(b), amended by HB 24-1350 | August 7, 2024 |
| Presumptive maximum fee for a privately paid CFI investigation and report raised to $3,309, with $500 for testimony and preparation | Chief Justice Directive 04-08 | August 26, 2026 |
If a page you are reading quotes a CFI cap of $2,000, $2,750, or $3,250, it is describing an earlier version of the directive. If it says the judge "may interview the child in chambers" without mentioning the motion requirement or the findings requirement, it is describing the statute as it read before August 2024.
CHANGING AN EXISTING PARENTING ORDER BECAUSE A CHILD WANTS TO MOVE
The version of this question that actually lands in court is rarely about a first parenting plan. It is usually a parent with an existing order, a teenager who has announced they want to switch houses, and a question about what happens next.
The answer depends entirely on how large the requested change is. C.R.S. 14-10-129 sets two very different standards.
For an ordinary adjustment to the parenting time schedule, the standard is best interests. Section 14-10-129(1)(a)(I) lets the court make or modify an order granting or denying parenting time whenever the modification would serve the child's best interests. A maturing teenager's schedule, activities, and stated preferences all fit comfortably into that analysis.
For a change that both substantially changes parenting time and changes the parent the child lives with most of the time, the bar is much higher. Under 14-10-129(2), the court must find, based on facts arising since the prior decree or unknown to the court at the time, that circumstances have changed for the child or the majority-time parent, and that the modification is necessary to serve the child's best interests.
Even then, the statute instructs the court to retain the existing schedule unless one of four things is true: the parties agree, the child has been integrated into the moving party's family with the other parent's consent, the majority-time parent intends to relocate in a way that substantially changes the child's geographic ties to the other parent, or the child's present environment endangers physical health or significantly impairs emotional development and the harm of changing environments is outweighed by the advantage of the change.
Read that list again, because this is where the "my fourteen-year-old gets to decide" idea breaks down. A teenager's stated preference is not one of the four doors. It is evidence that may help establish changed circumstances or best interests, and it is relevant to the endangerment and integration questions, but standing alone it does not open the door.
Two further limits are worth knowing. Section 14-10-129(1.5) generally bars a second motion for a substantial modification that also changes the majority-time parent within two years of the disposition of a prior one, unless affidavits show endangerment or an intended relocation. And under 14-10-129(1)(b)(I), the court cannot restrict a parent's parenting time without finding that the parenting time would endanger the child's physical health or significantly impair emotional development, plus specific factual findings supporting the restriction.
The Colorado Court of Appeals summarized the practical gap between the two standards in In re West, 94 P.3d 1248 (Colo. App. 2004): endangerment will necessarily encompass best interests, but few best interests arguments will show endangerment.
WHEN A CHILD'S PREFERENCE STOPS MATTERING
There is an age that matters in Colorado parenting cases, but it is not the age at which a child chooses. It is the age at which the court stops having anything to allocate.
In In re Tibbetts, 2018 COA 117, 428 P.3d 686, the Court of Appeals held that an appeal of a parenting time order is moot when the child who is the subject of the order turns eighteen while the appeal is pending. An eighteen-year-old is no longer subject to the dissolution court's jurisdiction to allocate parenting time, and the existing parenting time order is no longer enforceable as to that child.
That has a blunt practical consequence. For a child who is sixteen or seventeen, a contested modification can easily take longer than the child has left as a minor, and the cost of the fight may outrun any benefit. That calculation belongs in the conversation before a motion gets filed, not after.
Child support runs on a separate track and is governed by a different statute, so it does not necessarily end on the same date that a parenting time order becomes unenforceable.
HOW THIS WORKS IN EL PASO AND TELLER COUNTIES
Both counties sit in Colorado's 4th Judicial District, and the district's local practice shapes when and whether anyone ever asks a judge to interview a child.
Mediation is mandatory in El Paso and Teller Counties for all contested domestic cases, including allocation of parental responsibility and post-decree matters. Failing to attend carries real exposure. The district's scheduling instructions warn that sanctions may include granting the motion if the other party filed it, or dismissing the motion if you filed it and did not appear.
All 4th Judicial District mediation is handled remotely. The district offers no in-person mediation services, so scheduling, questions, and the session itself happen by phone or video. A parent who is unwilling to participate based on claims of physical or psychological abuse by the other party may request a waiver by filing the appropriate forms with the court.
El Paso County also requires a Level 1 parenting class in every domestic relations case involving children under eighteen, and contested cases move through a mandatory initial status conference before they are set for an evidentiary hearing.
The practical effect is that most parenting disputes in this district are resolved, or substantially narrowed, before any judge considers whether to interview a child. When a child's preference is going to matter, it usually matters first at mediation and in a CFI report, and only later, if at all, in chambers. At Moran, Allen & Associates Family Law, that sequencing shapes how we advise parents to raise a child's stated wishes in the first place.
If your case involves a proposed change to which parent the child lives with most of the time, our page on child custody in Colorado Springs covers the allocation framework in more detail, and the Woodland Park family law page covers Teller County practice.
WHAT TO DO IF YOUR CHILD ASKS TO LIVE WITH YOU
What a parent does in the weeks after that conversation tends to matter more than the conversation itself. A few practices consistently help, and a few consistently backfire.
- Do not coach. Court investigators are trained to ask non-suggestive questions precisely because coached preferences are common, and a preference that reads as rehearsed damages the parent it was meant to help.
- Do not make the child the messenger. Schedule changes belong between the adults or in a filing, not in a text the child is asked to deliver.
- Write down the specifics. Commute times, missed activities, school performance, medical appointments, and who handles them are the concrete facts that turn a preference into a reasoned one.
- Do not withhold the child unilaterally. An existing order stays enforceable until it is changed, and self-help tends to become the central issue at the hearing.
- Raise it early in the process. The initial status conference is the natural point to discuss whether a CFI appointment is warranted and what its scope should be.
- Think about scope before cost. The appointment order defines what the CFI investigates, and a narrow, well-drafted scope is what keeps an investigation inside the presumptive fee cap.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
At what age can a child decide which parent to live with in Colorado?
There is no such age. Colorado law asks whether the child is sufficiently mature to express reasoned and independent preferences about the parenting time schedule, and treats that preference as one factor among the best interests factors in C.R.S. 14-10-124. Older children are generally more likely to be found sufficiently mature, but no age makes a preference controlling.
Can my sixteen-year-old refuse to go to the other parent's house?
An existing parenting order remains enforceable regardless of how the child feels about it, and a parent who stops complying is exposed to enforcement. If the schedule genuinely no longer works, the route is a motion to modify under C.R.S. 14-10-129, not a unilateral change.
Will the judge talk to my child?
Possibly, but only on a motion, and only if the court decides an interview is appropriate. C.R.S. 14-10-126 requires the court to make findings explaining why it granted or denied the request, requires a record of any interview, and requires the court to give paramount consideration to cases involving a child's allegation of domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, or child sexual abuse.
Does a CFI have to tell the court what my child said?
Yes, as to the child's wishes. Section 14-10-116.5(2)(b) requires that the child's wishes, if expressed, be disclosed in the CFI's written report. The governing directive adds that the report should set forth those wishes even when the CFI recommends something different.
How much does a CFI cost in Colorado?
For a privately paid CFI, the presumptive maximum for the investigation and report is $3,309 per appointment, with a separate presumptive maximum of $500 for testimony and preparation, under Chief Justice Directive 04-08 as amended effective August 26, 2026. Exceeding either cap requires prior court approval in a written order with specific findings, even if both parents agree to it.
Can I change which parent the child lives with just because my teenager wants to move?
Not on the preference alone. Under C.R.S. 14-10-129(2), a modification that substantially changes parenting time and changes the majority-residence parent requires changed circumstances plus a finding that the change is necessary to serve the child's best interests, and the court retains the existing schedule unless the parties agree, the child has been integrated into the moving party's family with consent, a qualifying relocation is planned, or the present environment endangers the child.
TALK WITH A COLORADO SPRINGS FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY
A child's stated preference is worth taking seriously, and it is worth presenting carefully. Whether it belongs in a CFI's scope, in a motion for an in-chambers interview, or in a modification request depends on the child's age, the size of the change you are asking for, and what the current order already says.
Our firm handles allocation of parental responsibilities and post-decree modifications in El Paso County and Teller County. If you would like to talk through how your child's wishes fit into your case, you can schedule a consultation with Moran, Allen & Associates Family Law.
SOURCES
- C.R.S. 14-10-124, Best interests of the child
- C.R.S. 14-10-126, Interviews
- C.R.S. 14-10-116, Legal representative of the child
- C.R.S. 14-10-116.5, Child and family investigator
- C.R.S. 14-10-127, Evaluation and reports
- C.R.S. 14-10-129, Modification of parenting time
- Chief Justice Directive 04-08, Court Appointments of Child and Family Investigators, amended effective August 26, 2026
- 4th Judicial District Mediation Office Scheduling Instructions, Colorado Judicial Branch
- Forms for El Paso County, Colorado Judicial Branch
- Case law cited: In re Hartley, 886 P.2d 665 (Colo. 1994); In re Rinow, 624 P.2d 365 (Colo. App. 1981); In re Turek, 817 P.2d 615 (Colo. App. 1991); In re Custody of C.J.S., 37 P.3d 479 (Colo. App. 2001); In re Agner, 659 P.2d 53 (Colo. App. 1982); In re West, 94 P.3d 1248 (Colo. App. 2004); In re Tibbetts, 2018 COA 117, 428 P.3d 686.