Debbie Benefield

Working with Denver's Harris Law Firm, Rep. Debbie Benefield helped draft HB10-1097, a bill designed to protect children when parents separate, allowing them the same rights of children of divorced parents.

"When parents divorce in Colorado, there is an automatic order that protects the children," said Rich Harris of The Harris Law Firm. That order does not apply to the kids who have parents that separate but were never married. “What we’ve tried to do is fix an anomaly in the Colorado family law statutes,” Harris said.

Current law acts as an emergency injunction. Should a parent file for divorce and serve the spouse with a custody order, then neither parent can take the child or children out of the state without consent of the other parents. Children of parents who separate do not fall under this category.

Why does this type of law not exist already for these types of families? That’s what Harris and legislators tried to figure out. While they found no legislative history to explain it, they dealt with today’s reality that more unmarried parents raise children. “Perhaps people are grounded in the old-fashioned notion ‘illegitimate kids deserve less legal protection’,” Harris said. “People thought that married parents are entitled to more legal protection than unmarried parents.”

Gov. Ritter signed the bill into law in March.

Read the full background story here.