Colorado divorce and custody, explained.
Colorado divorce and custody, explained by Aaron Herzberg — for business owners, executives, professionals, and parents. A new article most weekday mornings, each one written from the cases and linked to the practice page it belongs with.
Most Colorado divorces end in a conference room, not a courtroom. Mediation, binding arbitration, med-arb, and collaborative practice each offer a different trade of speed, privacy, and control — and the choice is strategic.…
After 50, a Colorado divorce is about runway. Long-marriage maintenance, dividing retirement without a tax bill, Social Security timing, health coverage, the house, and the estate plan all have to be decided together.…
Under the Colorado Marital Agreements Act, a premarital or postmarital agreement is only as good as the day it has to work. Voluntariness, disclosure, access to counsel, and a plain-language waiver decide whether it holds.…
Colorado gives courts five years after a decree to reallocate assets when a spouse's disclosures turn out to have been materially false. That clock changes the arithmetic of concealment.…
Colorado scrapped the 93-overnight child support cliff on March 1, 2026. Every overnight now earns a credit from a statutory table. How the old rule worked, what replaced it, worked examples at several overnight counts, and why counting accurately now matters in every case.…
"It's in a trust, so it's protected." Sometimes. Colorado distinguishes vested interests from discretionary ones, treats the growth of a vested interest as marital, and weighs even non-property interests when dividing everything else.…
Colorado maintenance is not automatic. A spouse who has enough property, can earn a living, was married under three years, or signed a valid waiver may get nothing. Adultery is not on the list.…
One worksheet instead of two, the overnight cliff replaced by a curve, a guideline ceiling of $40,000 a month, and discretionary tax exemptions — what the rebuilt C.R.S. 14-10-115 means for high-income parents.…
Once a move is allowed, the hard part is writing a plan that keeps a child connected to a parent hundreds of miles away. What a workable Colorado long-distance plan contains, who pays for travel, and which state keeps the case.…
Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts move wealth out of the taxable estate — with the marriage as the access mechanism. In a divorce, the donor loses the access, sometimes keeps the tax bill, and the trust may be beyond the court's reach.…
In a hard-fought Colorado custody case the judge can appoint an attorney whose only client is the child's best interests. What a CLR does, how it differs from a CFI, a PRE, or the old guardian ad litem, who pays, and how to conduct yourself once one is on the case.…
Retirement accounts are often the largest marital asset and the most commonly mishandled. QDROs, Colorado PERA, the time-rule formula, and survivor benefits each carry drafting traps that cost real money.…
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