Colorado Informal Kinship Care vs Guardianship: How Legal Status Changes Your Benefits

The legal arrangement between you and the child you're raising determines almost everything about what financial help you can access in Colorado. Informal care, court-ordered guardianship, and child welfare placement each unlock different programs — and the gaps between them are wider than most families realize.

What Counts as Informal Kinship Care

Informal kinship care means you're physically caring for a relative's child without any court order or formal delegation of authority. There's no paperwork filed with a judge. The child lives with you because that's what the family decided, often under urgent circumstances.

Colorado doesn't require a court order for a relative to apply for several major benefit programs on behalf of a child. You can apply for:

• Colorado Works child-only grant: The county evaluates eligibility based solely on the child's income and resources. Your income — wages, pension, Social Security — is entirely excluded from the calculation. A single-child household qualifies for up to $173 per month in Basic Cash Assistance.
• Health First Colorado (Medicaid): You can apply as a non-parent caretaker through the Colorado PEAK portal. No court order or parental signature is required. If you don't claim the child as a tax dependent, your income isn't counted in the child's Medicaid eligibility determination.
• CHP+: For children whose household income falls between 143% and 260% of the Federal Poverty Level, Child Health Plan Plus provides medical coverage with modest co-pays.
• SNAP: The child is generally included in your household unit for food assistance purposes, so your income does factor into SNAP eligibility.

What informal care does not provide access to: foster care maintenance payments, RGAP, or the non-certified kinship payments under SB 24-008. Those programs require county child welfare involvement.

What Changes with Legal Guardianship

A court-ordered guardianship (issued under C.R.S. Title 15, Article 14, Part 2) gives you recognized legal authority over the child. You receive Letters of Guardianship (JDF 830), and your status as the child's caretaker is no longer dependent on informal family agreements.

For benefit purposes, a guardian applies as a non-parent caretaker — the same status as an informal relative — so the child-only Colorado Works rules still apply and your income is still excluded. The practical difference is that you hold a legal document that every agency, school, and medical provider will recognize without question.

Guardianship also opens the door to the Relative Guardianship Assistance Program (RGAP), but only if the child was previously placed with you through the county child welfare system in a fully certified foster home for at least six consecutive months. If you went directly to probate court for guardianship without a child welfare placement first, RGAP isn't available.

The In-Between: Power of Attorney

Colorado allows parents to delegate care authority to a relative through a power of attorney under C.R.S. § 15-14-105. This is commonly done using Judicial Department Form 751 (JDF 751). The delegation lasts up to 12 months — not six months, despite what some local literature claims. The six-month cap applies to temporary judicial guardianship appointments under a different statute.

A power of attorney establishes your legal authority for medical consent and school enrollment. It does not, however, create eligibility for child welfare subsidies, foster payments, or guardianship assistance. For cash, food, and health benefits, you apply as a caretaker relative under the same rules as informal care.

Side-by-Side Comparison

When Guardianship Makes Financial Sense

For benefit eligibility alone, guardianship doesn't unlock much that informal care doesn't already provide. The child-only Colorado Works grant, Medicaid, and SNAP are all available without a court order.

Where guardianship matters financially is in two scenarios:

1. The child was placed through child welfare and you want to move toward permanency with RGAP funding. Guardianship is the legal endpoint of that process — but the RGAP agreement must be signed before the court enters the guardianship order.

2. Administrative friction is slowing everything down. A court order eliminates the need to produce alternative verification at every agency visit. If you're spending hours proving your relationship and authority each time you apply for a program or enroll the child in school, a guardianship order replaces all of that with a single document.

The cost of filing for guardianship — court fees, possible attorney costs — is real for families on tight budgets. Colorado Legal Services provides free legal help for qualifying low-income Coloradans; its office finder lists regional contacts. Up to $2,000 in legal expenses may be reimbursable under an RGAP agreement.

Making the Decision

The right arrangement depends on your family's circumstances, timeline, and relationship with the child's parents. The Colorado Kinship Financial Help Guide maps each legal status to the specific programs, agencies, and documentation required, so you can see exactly what each path costs and provides before making a decision.

See more Colorado guides →