Background
Ashley Sullivan (mother) and Peter Cumplido (father) had permanent parenting-time orders entered in September 2024 covering their two children. Under those orders, father received Sunday and Monday overnights plus Thursday evenings, while mother held all remaining parenting time; joint decision-making applied to most areas, with education solely allocated to mother.
In May 2025, mother moved to modify parenting time, seeking to eliminate father’s time on the ground that he was consistently failing to exercise it. She simultaneously moved to modify decision-making responsibility and filed a motion regarding parenting-time disputes, both based on similar allegations. The district court denied the decision-making motion without a hearing on June 5, 2025, and held a consolidated hearing on the remaining motions. Following that hearing, the court modified parenting time—not in mother’s favor, but by expanding father’s overnights to Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, leaving mother four overnights per week—finding the change was in the children’s best interests.
Mother, proceeding pro se, filed a notice of appeal on August 27, 2025, challenging the denial of her decision-making motion, the modification of parenting time, and the court’s refusal to appoint a child and family investigator (CFI). Father did not appear in the appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Colorado Court of Appeals dismissed mother’s challenge to the denial of her decision-making motion for lack of jurisdiction. Because that order was entered June 5, 2025 and mother’s notice of appeal was not filed until August 27, 2025—well beyond the mandatory forty-nine-day deadline under C.A.R. 4(a)—the court lacked authority to review it. Timely filing of a notice of appeal is a jurisdictional prerequisite under Colorado law.
On the parenting-time modification, the court affirmed. Mother argued the district court made insufficient and unsupported findings, but the appellate record lacked a transcript of the hearing, including the court’s oral ruling from the bench. As appellant, it was mother’s burden to designate and transmit all transcripts necessary for review. Without the transcript, the court was required to presume the record supported the district court’s order, even though the written order itself was acknowledged to be conclusory on the best-interests factors under § 14-10-124(1.5), C.R.S. 2025.
The court also rejected mother’s argument that the district court acted improperly by increasing father’s parenting time rather than adopting her proposed modification or leaving the schedule unchanged. Section 14-10-129(1)(a)(I) expressly permits a court to “make or modify” a parenting-time order “whenever” it serves the children’s best interests, and no authority requires a court to limit itself to the movant’s proposal once parenting time is placed at issue. Finally, the court declined to address the CFI issue because mother first raised it in a post-judgment C.R.C.P. 59 motion—an improper vehicle for new issues—rendering it unpreserved for appeal.
Key Takeaways
- Colorado’s forty-nine-day deadline for filing a notice of appeal is jurisdictional; missing it, even by a pro se litigant, forfeits appellate review of the challenged order entirely.
- An appellant who fails to provide hearing transcripts bears the consequence: the appellate court presumes the missing record supports the trial court’s ruling, even when the written order appears conclusory.
- When a party files a motion to modify parenting time, the trial court is not limited to granting or denying that specific request—it may impose any modification it finds serves the children’s best interests, including one that benefits the non-moving party.
- Issues raised for the first time in a C.R.C.P. 59 post-judgment motion are not preserved for appellate review.
Why It Matters
This unpublished decision reinforces two procedural traps that frequently ensnare pro se family-law litigants in Colorado. First, the jurisdictional nature of the notice-of-appeal deadline means no equitable exception applies—courts cannot reach the merits no matter how sympathetic the circumstances. Second, the transcript-presumption rule carries enormous practical weight: a trial court’s oral ruling may supply all the factual and legal reasoning that a sparse written order omits, and an appellant who fails to obtain that transcript effectively concedes the point.
The court’s treatment of the “sua sponte” modification question also carries broader significance for practitioners. By confirming that a court retains full statutory authority to craft any parenting-time arrangement in the children’s best interests once the issue is properly before it, the decision signals that moving to modify parenting time is a two-edged sword—a litigant who opens that door should be prepared for an outcome that may run counter to their motion.