Clients With Child Support Modification Issues

Dear New Clients:

Welcome!

We assure you we will bring our highest efforts to assist you to resolve in an efficient, respectful and affordable way — issues posed by one party’s request to modify an order for child support.

In lieu of forwarding a packet of materials by mail, we have discussed your each accessing this information directly and immediately from our website. Of course, you can return at any time to access these links and resources.

Tools To Prepare

Documents To Gather

Ordinarily, we suggest you download and review our Adobe-formatted document:

Helpful Information to Assemble — Modification of Child Support

This document requires you to have Adobe’s widely used and free software, Adobe Acrobat Reader. This tool will direct you in gathering essential information to discuss and resolve most relevant financial issues.

Sworn Financial Statement

It is also helpful to have completed, or revised and updated the Colorado divorce financial form now known as the Sworn Financial Statement.

A table in the tools and forms (divorce forms) section of our website provides three versions of that form and its single page attachment (the Sworn Financial Schedules), also including an Adobe-formatted one. The “auto-calculating” Word version conveniently calculates subtotals and totals of relevant sections of the form (for example, total income, total deductions, total expenses, shortfall or excess).

In the past we recommended use of a popular, copyrighted special “short form” of Financial Affidavit for Colorado child support modification cases (offered by Bradford Publishing Company, a Colorado legal publisher offering divorce forms for electronic download). With the 2006 changes to Colorado divorce law, a Colorado Supreme Court Order directs the uniform use of the new Sworn Financial Statement in all family law cases, including those involving modification of spousal maintenance and child support orders. As a result of 2006 changes in Colorado law, the special “short form” has been discontinued.

Using These Optional Tools

These are simply tools to assist in our mediation, and you should not feel like you must have discussed or resolved any of these issues before we meet. Most couples need some help in understanding the range of choices they have and that is part of our job as a mediator. Nonetheless, we provide these to you to give you some direction of what information may be useful in streamlining your work together.

(Alternatively, if you feel you have researched and have all documents likely to be helpful, available and organized, these may not be of interest to you.)

Help With Getting Here

Be sure to consult and perhaps print our driving directions, and a map provided by MapQuest, to assist you in traveling to our office. Although the MapQuest map is generally helpful, we strongly recommend you use our driving directions in lieu of theirs (there appear to be errors in directions they provide from some originations).

Our Fees And Payment Policy

This will confirm that, absent any other agreement, you will each be responsible for paying at the end of the session, one-half of our hourly fees, and that we ordinarily anticipate a two-hour first session. We do accept MasterCard and Visa, if that is helpful.

As is the policy of all mediators, we cannot assist you in an agreement on how you will share fees, and you must have this issue decided in advance of beginning your work with us.

Third Parties, Other Family And Children

On occasion, of course, the presence of third persons (including other family members) is helpful and appropriate in mediation. In many cases, however, the presence of others hinders the mediation process. Unless arrangements have been considered and agreed to in advance by both parties and the mediator, third persons and children should not accompany you to your mediation session.

We genuinely look forward to assisting you. Please call or write if you have any questions or concerns.

Confirmation Requested

We’d appreciate a confirmation that you have received our email confirming your appointment and have accessed this page of resource materials.