Legal Change and Child Custody Awards

This article compares custody award patterns in a sample of contested child custody cases filed in one jurisdiction of Colorado in 1966 and 1976, a time period which is prior to and follows the adoption of a sex neutral statute that stresses the best interest of the child in the judicial award of child custody. We find that legal change has had limited impact in the behavior of judges, evaluators, and couples themselves with mothers routinely acquiring custodial rights of the children following divorce unless shown to be unfit to parent. We also find an increase in the proportion of shared, joint, and split custody arrangements in 1976 and evidence that the new legal standards may be inspiring men to play a more aggressive role in contested child custody cases. This suggests that while new sex neutral standards may not translate into more father-only awards, they will mean greater paternal participation in custody in the years to come.