Background
After the Larimer County District Court dissolved the marriage of Derek Skellchock and Alora Ann Paige Volz and awarded mother primary parenting time, mother filed an emergency motion to restrict father’s parenting time. She alleged that on July 8, 2025, father committed an act of domestic violence against his ex-girlfriend while the couple’s child was present during his parenting time, that father was arrested and criminally charged, and that the Larimer County Department of Human Services created a safety plan recommending the child have no contact with father. A magistrate temporarily restricted father’s parenting time pending an evidentiary hearing.
Following the evidentiary hearing, the magistrate found that a domestic violence incident had occurred on July 8, 2025, and that father had demonstrated a pattern of domestic violence. Nevertheless, the magistrate denied mother’s motion to continue the restriction, concluding that father had sufficiently mitigated safety concerns by moving away from his ex-girlfriend and ceasing all contact with her. Father petitioned the district court for review, raising jurisdictional objections and challenging several evidentiary rulings. The district court adopted the magistrate’s ruling, and father appealed pro se.
The appeal was complicated by the court’s observation that father’s opening brief cited cases that “do not appear to exist and that bear the hallmarks of hallucinations by a large language model.” The court declined to impose sanctions but warned that further submission of fabricated citations could result in dismissal of an appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed on all issues. On jurisdiction, the court held that although pending appeals generally divest a trial court of jurisdiction over matters material to those appeals, Colorado statute § 14-10-129(1)(a)(I) explicitly grants the district court continuing jurisdiction to make or modify parenting time orders during the pendency of an appeal. Accordingly, the magistrate and district court retained authority to rule on mother’s emergency motion regardless of father’s other pending appeals.
On the evidentiary challenges, the court upheld the magistrate’s discretionary decision to allow testimony from a Department of Human Services caseworker (Kapperman) who had not been timely disclosed as a witness, finding no prejudice to father given his demonstrated awareness of the Department’s investigation and its key personnel. The court also upheld admission of the child’s statements to mother under the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule, and found any error harmless in any event because those statements were cumulative of properly admitted testimony describing the assault and resulting injuries.
Finally, the court upheld the magistrate’s factual finding that father committed an act of domestic violence, concluding the finding was supported by Kapperman’s testimony, the child’s statements, and mother’s own testimony, and that credibility determinations and weighing of conflicting evidence are exclusively within the magistrate’s discretion. The court assumed without deciding that the domestic violence finding carried sufficient collateral consequences to give father standing to challenge it on appeal despite the restriction ultimately being lifted in his favor.
Key Takeaways
- Colorado’s domestic relations statute, § 14-10-129(1)(a)(I), expressly preserves trial court jurisdiction to modify parenting time orders during the pendency of an appeal — a party cannot use unrelated appeals to freeze parenting time proceedings.
- A magistrate has broad discretion to permit testimony from an undisclosed witness where the opposing party was not prejudiced by the late disclosure, particularly when that party was independently aware of the witness and the subject matter of the testimony.
- A child’s statements describing a violent incident made to a parent while the child is visibly distressed may qualify as excited utterances, even when made in response to questioning and after some passage of time.
- Factual findings on domestic violence will be upheld on appeal when they are supported by the record; appellate courts will not reweigh conflicting evidence or substitute their credibility judgments for the magistrate’s.
- Submission of AI-generated case citations that do not exist violates Colorado appellate rules and may result in sanctions, including dismissal.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that Colorado courts retain jurisdiction over parenting time emergencies even when other aspects of a dissolution case are on appeal, preventing a strategic use of multiple appeals to stall child-safety proceedings. Family law practitioners should note that a pending appeal is not a jurisdictional shield against emergency parenting time motions.
The opinion also serves as a notable public warning about the use of AI tools in legal practice. The court’s explicit footnote — identifying fabricated case citations as bearing “the hallmarks of hallucinations by a large language model” and citing prior Colorado authority on the issue — signals that Colorado appellate courts are actively scrutinizing AI-assisted briefs and are prepared to sanction attorneys and pro se litigants alike who submit fictitious authorities.