Wealth Planning: the articles.
Everything on the blog filed under Wealth Planning, newest first, with the practice page it belongs with.
- 01Mediation, Arbitration, or Private Resolution: Choosing Your Path Out of a Colorado Divorce
- 02What Makes a Prenup Enforceable in Colorado
- 03Trusts in a Colorado Divorce: When a Beneficiary Interest Is Property
- 04The SLAT Trap: When the Estate Plan Meets the Divorce
- 05Dividing Retirement Accounts in a Colorado Divorce Without Blowing Them Up
- →High-Asset Divorce, the practice page
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.…
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.…
"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.…
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.…
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.…
A Colorado decree revokes most gifts to a former spouse, but not the ones that matter most: ERISA retirement plans and anything you never updated. What the statute does, what it misses, the risky months between filing and decree, and how to protect the children's inheritance.…
Colorado protects the assets you brought into the marriage — but not their growth. The increase in value of separate property during the marriage is marital, and proving the starting point is where cases are won or lost.…
Colorado has an advisory formula for spousal maintenance, but it is advisory for a reason. For higher-income couples the guideline stops applying and maintenance becomes an argument about lifestyle, earning capacity, and preparation.…
Colorado still recognizes common law marriage — no ceremony required. For high-net-worth couples, a found marriage can put years of asset appreciation, maintenance, and inheritance rights on the table.…
A marital agreement and an estate plan written by different lawyers who never spoke will eventually contradict each other — at a divorce or at a death, the two worst possible moments.…
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