Parental Resp Conc SFC-M

24CA0409 Parental Resp Conc SFC-M

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 24CA0409
City and County of Denver District Court No. 21DR30028
Honorable Demetria E. Trujillo, Judge

In re the Parental Responsibilities Concerning SFC-M, a Child,

and Concerning Jennifer Clayton

Appellee,

and

Joel Austin Meaney,

Appellant.

ORDER AFFIRMED

Division II
Opinion by JUDGE JOHNSON
Fox and Schock, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)
Announced November 27, 2024

GPS Legal Solutions, Jennifer Gilbert, Denver, Colorado, for Appellee

Bovo Law Group, LLC, Todd F. Bovo, Denver, Colorado, for Appellant
¶1 In this post-decree allocation of parental responsibilities case,

Joel Austin Meaney (father) appeals the district court’s order that

denied his motion for reconsideration of a magistrate’s ruling. We

affirm.

I. Background

¶2 Father and Jennifer Clayton (mother) have one child together.

In 2020, mother alleged that father was physically and verbally

abusive, and, at her request, the county court issued a permanent

civil protection order that restricted his contact with her.

¶3 Mother then petitioned for an allocation of parental

responsibilities concerning their child. The parties agreed to

allocate primary parenting time to mother and to allow father to

exercise overnight visits every other week. The district court

adopted the parties’ agreement.

¶4 About a year later, mother filed an emergency motion to

restrict father’s parenting time alleging that his behavior was

placing the child in imminent emotional danger. She explained that

father had interfered with the child’s school attendance, kept the

child from mother during her parenting time, engaged in physical

altercations with personnel at the child’s school, and violated the

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protection order. After a hearing, the magistrate granted the motion

and restricted father’s parenting time, allowing him to exercise one

supervised visit for up to four hours every other weekend.

¶5 After nine months, father asked the court to reinstate his

unsupervised parenting time. The magistrate denied his motion.

The magistrate found that retaining the supervised parenting time

order was in the child’s best interests and that there had not been

any substantial and continuing change in father’s behavior to

warrant lifting the restriction. At the conclusion of the order, the

magistrate advised father that

[p]ursuant to Colorado Rules for Magistrates
7(a)(5), a party may obtain review of a
magistrate’s final order or judgment by filing a
petition to review such final order or judgment
with the reviewing judge no later than . . . 21
days from the date the final order or judgment
is mailed or otherwise transmitted to the
parties.

¶6 Fourteen days later, father filed in the district court a motion

to extend the deadline for “fil[ing] a motion for reconsideration

pursuant to C.R.C.P. 59.” The court did not rule on the extension.

¶7 Father then filed a “Motion for Reconsideration” of the

magistrate’s order “[p]ursuant to C.R.C.P. 59(a).” The district court

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denied the motion. The court explained that the exclusive method

for seeking review of a magistrate’s order was a petition for review

under C.R.M. 7(a)(5). The court concluded that it did not have

jurisdiction to rule on father’s C.R.C.P. 59 motion, and it declined

to construe the motion as a petition for review.

II. District Court’s Order

¶8 Father contends that the district court erred by not construing

his C.R.C.P. 59 motion for reconsideration as a C.R.M. 7(a)(5)

petition for review. We discern no reversible error.

A. Preliminary Issue

¶9 Mother argues that father is barred from pursuing his appeal

because he did not file a petition for review under C.R.M. 7(a)(5).

Even though father may not challenge the magistrate’s ruling in the

absence of a petition for review under C.R.M. 7(a)(5), see C.R.M.

7(a)(11), that does not prevent us from reviewing the court’s order

on the C.R.C.P. 59 motion for reconsideration. That order fully

disposed of the litigation and, therefore, was a final order subject to

our appellate review. See Mulberry Frontage Metro. Dist. v. Sunstate

Equip. Co., LLC, 2023 COA 66, ¶ 14; In re Marriage of Thorburn,

2022 COA 80, ¶ 19. We thus have jurisdiction to review whether

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the court erred by declining to construe father’s motion as a

petition for review.

B. Standard of Review

¶ 10 We review de novo the court’s application of the law and its

authority to rule on a motion. See Thorburn, ¶ 26; McDonald v.

Zions First Nat’l Bank, N.A., 2015 COA 29, ¶ 33; see also In re

Estate of Hillebrandt, 979 P.2d 36, 37-38 (Colo. App. 1999)

(concluding that a motion for reconsideration did not constitute a

petition for district court review).

C. Analysis

¶ 11 In a parental responsibilities case, a magistrate may preside

over a post-decree parenting time motion without the parties’

consent. C.R.M. (6)(b)(1)(B). When the magistrate issues a final

order on such a motion, a C.R.M. 7(a)(5) petition is the exclusive

manner by which a party may seek review of the magistrate’s

ruling. See In re Marriage of Cooprider, 140 P.3d 312, 313 (Colo.

App. 2006); In re Marriage of Tonn, 53 P.3d 1185, 1186-87 (Colo.

App. 2002). “C.R.M. 5(a) prohibits magistrates from reconsidering

their rulings or imposing postjudgment relief.” In re Marriage of

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Matheny, 2024 COA 81, ¶ 19; see also Hillebrandt, 979 P.2d at 38;

accord In re Taylor, 134 P.3d 579, 583 (Colo. App. 2006).

¶ 12 A court may deem a motion for reconsideration of a

magistrate’s order as a petition for district court review. Cooprider,

140 P.3d at 313. But the court is under no obligation to do so. Id.

And we will uphold the court’s decision declining to construe the

motion as a petition for review when the record demonstrates that

the motion was not presented to the court as a petition for district

court review. See Hillebrandt, 979 P.2d at 37. For example, in

Hillebrandt, a division of this court upheld a court’s decision that

declined to construe a motion for reconsideration as a petition for

district court review where the motion was entitled a “motion for

reconsideration,” included no reference to the magistrate’s rules,

requested a reconsideration of the facts, and did not ask for review

by the district court judge. Id.; cf. Taylor, 134 P.3d at 581 (noting

that a court may treat a motion for reconsideration as a petition for

review when the motion in question is “identical in every material

respect to, [is] sufficient to constitute, and [is] timely as, a petition

for district court review”).

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¶ 13 When the magistrate denied father’s motion to reinstate

unsupervised parenting time, she advised the parties that if either

of them wished to have the decision reviewed, they could file a

C.R.M. 7(a)(5) petition for district court review within twenty-one

days. Instead of filing that petition, father, who was represented by

an attorney, indicated that he intended to file a C.R.C.P. 59 motion

for reconsideration and asked for an extension of time to file that

motion, which the court never acted upon. As part of his requested

extension, father noted that “[his] deadline to submit a motion

pursuant to C.R.C.P. 59 is January 5, 2024.”

¶ 14 When he filed the motion for reconsideration, he neither

referenced C.R.M. 7(a)(5) nor sought a form of relief explicitly

provided by the magistrate rules. True, he asked for a new trial,

and C.R.M. 7(a)(8) allows the reviewing court to “conduct further

proceedings, take additional evidence, or order a trial de novo in the

district court.” But he did not explicitly rely on the magistrate

rules, which direct the reviewing court to either “adopt, reject, or

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modify the initial order or judgment of the magistrate.”1 C.R.M.

7(a)(10). Under these circumstances, the court did not err by

declining to construe father’s motion as a petition for district court

review. See Hillebrandt, 979 P.2d at 37. Father opted to file a

C.R.C.P. 59 motion for reconsideration, and the court treated it as

such.

¶ 15 Nonetheless, father highlights a note in the register of actions

and argues that this note indicated the court understood his motion

was a petition for district court review. But the note merely stated,

“MAG REVW 309,” and it was added by the magistrate. Father

develops no legal argument explaining why such a note established

that his motion was actually a petition for review or how it rendered

the court’s decision declining to construe the motion as a petition

for review improper. See In re Parental Responsibilities Concerning

S.Z.S., 2022 COA 105, ¶ 29 (declining to address an undeveloped

1 We acknowledge that father filed his motion for reconsideration on

January 12, 2024, which was twenty-one days from the entry of the
magistrate’s December 22, 2023 order and, thus, would have been
timely if he had filed as a petition for review under C.R.M. 7(a)(5).
But the record does not indicate father intended the timing of his
filing to coincide with the magistrate rules. Until this appeal, father
never acknowledged nor attempted to correct his mistake in filing
his motion for reconsideration under C.R.C.P. 59.

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argument). Regardless of the note, though, the record supports the

district court’s conclusion that father’s motion did not constitute a

petition for review. See Hillebrandt, 979 P.2d at 37.

III. Conclusion

¶ 16 The district court’s order is affirmed.

JUDGE FOX and JUDGE SCHOCK concur.

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