Background
The children began living full-time with their paternal grandparents in 2017 because mother was absent and father worked out of state. In 2018, the grandparents petitioned for allocation of parental responsibilities. Father and the grandparents stipulated to a parenting plan giving the grandparents full decision-making and parenting-time responsibilities, and the court adopted it. The record contained a return showing mother was personally served, but she did not respond.
In 2022, father sought to modify the arrangement, and he and the grandparents stipulated that the children would transition to father’s full-time care. Three years later, mother sought to amend the allocation order, vacate the case based on alleged lack of service, and obtain appointed counsel and a child and family investigator. A magistrate denied the motions, and the district court upheld that ruling.
The Court’s Holding
The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed. To the extent mother’s motion to vacate asserted lack of personal jurisdiction under Rule 12(b)(2), she waived that defense by raising it years after the deadlines for a responsive pleading or amendment. The court also rejected her request to treat the motion as one for relief from a void judgment under Rule 60(b)(3): her unsupported assertion that the process server committed perjury did not constitute clear and convincing evidence that service was invalid.
The court held that Rule 60(b)(3) did not require an evidentiary hearing. It declined to consider mother’s undeveloped due-process and equal-protection assertions and found no judicial mismanagement. The court further held that the district court acted within its discretion in denying a CFI because mother sought the investigation to pursue an inadequately supported service challenge. Finally, indigent civil parties have no right to appointed counsel in an APR proceeding; the governing statute permits appointment of counsel for a child, not a parent.
Key Takeaways
- A personal-jurisdiction objection based on insufficient service must be raised timely or is waived.
- A bare allegation that a process server lied does not establish, by clear and convincing evidence, that a judgment is void under Rule 60(b)(3).
- Colorado APR statutes do not authorize court-appointed counsel for an indigent parent, and a CFI appointment remains discretionary.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the procedural limits on collateral challenges to long-final parental-responsibilities orders. A parent seeking to unsettle such an order on service grounds must timely raise the jurisdictional defense or present substantial evidence that the judgment is void.
It also distinguishes tools intended to protect children’s interests from discovery mechanisms for a parent’s litigation theories: a CFI may be appointed for best-interest issues, but the court need not appoint one to investigate unsupported allegations about prior service.