Denver Colorado Family Law Blog

The 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 1969 was recently celebrated. This marked the birth of the LGBT&Q rights movement, but it was over 40 years before same-sex couples could legally wed.

An estimated 491,000 same-sex marriages have since taken place here in the United States. A majority of them have been a loving union that often involve children, but some same-sex couples choose to file for divorce. There may have been many years of a monogamous relationship before marriage with only a few years of marriage. These unique circumstances mean that same-sex couples will have to come up with their own fair and equitable arrangement not based on the marriage’s length.

Custody battles have traditionally been a part of many contentious divorces. Following family experts’ lead, however, the courts here in Colorado typically award custody to both parents. Actually, custody is no longer a term used in Colorado divorce cases -- it has been replaced by the term "Allocation of Parental Responsibilities," which includes parenting time and decision making.

There are still times that dads will have to fight the traditional stereotypes that mothers make the best parent for raising children. The situation may arise shortly after the birth of a child when a mother nurses the child and a bond quickly forms. Sometimes it is a matter of a parent’s actions – a parent may have had mental health or substance abuse issues that prevented responsible parenting, or one parent aggressively excluded the other parent from parenting opportunities with the children, creating distance between the excluded parent and their children.

We thought it appropriate to provide tips to dads who will celebrate Father's Day for the first time as a divorced parent. It is a new world and chances are that the relationship with your children has shifted due to the split. Ideally, it was an amicable divorce and the process went smoothly, but experts believe that fathers will still need to take steps to strengthen the parental bonds.

Steps dad can take

We all like to think of ourselves as good parents. The strivers out there may think they could always do better, and that is likely true for anyone. At the same time, getting too caught up in the competitive parenting spiral can lead to doubts in the parents and likely mixed results for the children. Generally speaking, however, we have a good idea of how to get the best results out of a child, but we all can use a little help.

5 tips for being a better parent