LUTHMANN NOTE: Colorado just tossed a live grenade into the family court swamp. HB26-1309 says safety comes before contact, which should have been obvious before judges, evaluators, and reunification hustlers built an industry around forcing terrified kids back into danger. The best part is the hit on the reunification racket. The dangerous part is the broad “coercive control” language, which lawyers may weaponize in every custody war. So this is not a victory parade. It is ammunition. Now Colorado judges must prove it in findings, orders, and transcripts — especially when the protective parent has no money cannon. This piece is “Colorado Family Court Grenade,” first available on TheFamilyCourtCircus.com. Check out The Unknown Podcast on Spotify.
By Richard Luthmann with Michael Volpe
The Law Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
(COLORADO, USA) – Colorado has passed a new family court law, and anyone who has spent five minutes inside the custody-industrial swamp should pay attention. HB26-1309, dressed up under the polite title “Abuse in Cases of Separation,” is really a legislative confession. It admits what protective parents, family court critics, and battered children have been screaming into the wind for years: the system too often prioritizes contact over safety, procedure over reality, and court-ordered access over the bruised facts sitting right in front of the judge.
On The Unknown Podcast, investigative journalist and legal commentator Richard Luthmann joined investigative reporter Michael Volpe to put the Colorado law on the operating table. This was not a cheerleading session. It was not a partisan bumper sticker. It was two men who have seen enough family court wreckage to know that every reform bill carries two faces: the promise printed on the front page and the loopholes hiding in the basement.
The centerpiece of the law is the phrase “safety before contact.” That sounds obvious, which is exactly the problem. In a sane system, nobody would need a statute to tell judges that a child’s physical and emotional safety comes before a parent’s access claim. But family court is not sane. It is a courthouse carnival where abuse becomes “conflict,” terror becomes “alienation,” and the protective parent becomes the problem because he or she refused to keep feeding the child into the machinery.
Colorado Family Court Grenade: Volpe Sees the Trap in the Fine Print
Michael Volpe’s warning was sharp and necessary: Colorado may have opened the door to a new explosion of domestic violence claims because the law expands the definition of abuse into gray, elastic, and dangerously subjective territory. Physical violence, sexual abuse, stalking, and credible threats are one thing. Those are serious. Those belong in the front of the courthouse, not buried under therapy jargon.
But the statute also ventures into coercive control, isolation, monitoring, name-calling, financial control, threats to publish information, and other categories that may be real in abusive relationships but can also become litigation Play-Doh in the hands of aggressive lawyers.
That is where Volpe hit the nerve. In family court, incentives matter. Once a law tells every custody combatant that a domestic violence finding can reshape parenting time, decision-making authority, and the entire custody map, the race begins. Lawyers will read the statute like gamblers reading a racing form. Every angry text, every household budget argument, every relocation, every parental tracking app, every stupid insult in a dying marriage may suddenly be dressed up as “coercive control.”
This is not because abuse is fake. Abuse is very real. Coercive control is very real. But family court has a supernatural gift for taking real concepts and turning them into weapons. Parental alienation was supposed to describe one problem. It became a bludgeon against protective parents. High-conflict litigation was supposed to describe chaotic divorces. It became a fog machine that hid abuse. Colorado’s coercive-control language may be the next battlefield unless courts apply it with precision, evidence, and common sense.
Colorado Family Court Grenade: Luthmann Sees the Hit on the Reunification Racket
Richard Luthmann’s strongest point was that HB26-1309 takes a direct shot at the reunification therapy industry, and that matters. In its worst form, reunification is not therapy at all. It is a coercive pipeline. Children who resist contact with an abusive or terrifying parent are treated like malfunctioning appliances. Protective parents are accused of poisoning the child. Judges outsource reality to evaluators, coordinators, therapists, camps, programs, and professional fixers who profit from keeping the machine moving.
Colorado’s new law does not end that world, but it throws sand into the gears. Before a court pushes “relationship repair” between a child and a parent found to have committed domestic violence or child abuse, the law demands more than magic words and therapeutic theater. It requires accountability, behavioral change, compliance with treatment, and qualified professionals who actually understand domestic violence and child abuse dynamics. Generic anger management is not enough. A weekend workbook is not enough. The abusive parent does not get to walk into court, mumble a few phrases about healing, and demand access as if nothing happened.
That is the part of the law the family court establishment should fear because the reunification racket depends on euphemism. It depends on turning danger into resistance, resistance into pathology, and pathology into billable intervention. Luthmann understood the importance of this section because it shifts the burden back where it belongs. The child does not have to explain why he is terrified forever. The parent found to have committed abuse must show change, accountability, and safety.
Colorado Family Court Grenade: Reform, Weapon, or Both?
The hard truth is that Colorado may have passed a law that is both necessary and dangerous. That is not a contradiction. That is family court. In a clean system, a safety-first statute would be an obvious good. In the real system, any statute becomes a weapon the moment trial lawyers, custody experts, and bench politicians discover how to monetize it, distort it, or selectively enforce it.
The safeguard Luthmann identified is judicial findings. The law requires courts to make findings on the record. That is critical because family court thrives in murk. Bad rulings hide behind discretion. Abuse gets buried under boilerplate. Parents leave court not knowing whether the judge believed them, ignored them, misunderstood them, or simply wanted the file off the docket. Findings force the judge to leave fingerprints.
But findings are only as good as the judge making them. A lazy judge can still produce lazy findings. A biased evaluator can still poison the record. A wealthy litigant can still paper the other side into exhaustion. A vague standard can still be twisted. That is why this law cannot be treated as a victory parade. It must be treated as ammunition.
Colorado just lit up the family court battlefield. HB26-1309 says safety before contact. Good. Now prove it. Prove it in the transcripts. Prove it in the orders. Prove it when the protective parent is poor, and the accused parent has money. Prove it when the therapist industry starts howling. Prove it when the courthouse regulars try to rebrand the same old machinery under new statutory language. The law is on the books. The fight is in the courtroom.
