There are several ways to calculate child support nights in Colorado. Child support amounts in Colorado are calculated based on a set of guidelines established by the Colorado state legislature.
A key factor in calculating child support amounts is overnight totals, or how many nights the children spend with each parent. In any Colorado divorce or custody proceeding, the family court will set child support payments to ensure the financial security of the children.
Ways to count overnight stays
In Colorado divorce and custody cases, there are three ways to count visitation nights. Regardless of the method used to count Colorado parents’ overnight stays, it is critical that divorcing parents use the most accurate number for child support calculations. Otherwise, child support payments may be too high or too low.
Estimated overnight stays: Estimating overnight stays simply means that parents make their best estimate of how many overnight stays the non-resident parent has. The biggest problem with the estimate is that it is far from accurate and does not take into account any exceptions such as holidays.
Count by hand: Parents can count the number of overnight stays using a paper calendar and calculator. If a custody calendar has already been created, the parent can simply add up the days checked and get a nightly total. Accuracy can suffer because parents often forget to include exceptions to the standard weekly schedule, such as holidays, vacation days, and other events.
Custody Calendar Software: Custody software allows divorcing parents to create a custody schedule on the computer and then calculate how many nights each parent has. These programs can even calculate each parent’s individual hours, making total parenting time significantly different than just counting nights on a calendar. If the schedule changes, even by a few days, the program automatically recalculates the totals.
Colorado Parenting Time
While each state sets its own parenting time requirements, Colorado looks at sole or joint physical custody and the hours the nonresident parent spends with the children. Sole physical custody means that one parent houses the children for most of the year, and the nonresident parent spends 93 nights or less with the children.
For joint physical custody in Colorado, the nonresident parent spends between 94 and 182 nights with the children. A child support credit is awarded to the nonresident parent based on the number of scheduled overnight stays.
counting the nights
To get the total number of overnights for each parent per year, parents divorcing in Colorado must physically add up the overnights from the custody schedule. While there is no single correct way to do this, certain methods are easier and more accurate than others.
All overnight stays must be added, including weekdays, weekends, holidays, vacations, and other special events. To get a percentage, Colorado parents can take total overnight stays and then divide that number by 365. The answer represents the percentage of parenting time for the year. For example, if the nonresident parent hosts the children for 110 nights, this would be 30 percent of the time annually.
