Colorado Divorce Laws

What is alimony based on in Colorado? Alimony, we actually don’t use that word here in Colorado. It’s the same thing, but we use the word maintenance. The reason we use the word maintenance is because it’s need-based here in Colorado. It’s not as if you just should have maintenance/alimony because someone’s at fault or someone’s been bad and they need to be punished.

Here in Colorado, regardless of how bad the other party is, you’re not going to be able to get alimony or maintenance unless you fulfill on what we now have as a formula or such. So here in Colorado, we have a formula. It went into effect at the beginning of 2014. It is a new formula. It doesn’t go into effect unless you’ve had at least three years of marriage.  If you are under three years of marriage, then the formula doesn’t apply. You might be able to get short term, temporary maintenance/alimony to tide you over until you get a job. But the formula itself won’t come into effect unless you’ve married a relatively significant period of time – three years. Once you hit that three year mark, the formula comes into effect and, whereas historically, we used to argue about maintenance all the time, now there’s less argument about it because judges like formulas.

Formulas make things easier. The maintenance formula itself has some complexities to it that are beyond this video, however suffice it to say, a thumbnail if you wanted to use it would be that the spouse that needed maintenance would probably get 40% of the other spouse’s salary minus – I don’t know if you can stick with it – minus 50% of the salary that the spouse who has less income already makes, and then the only question at that point is the period of time that you’d get the maintenance. It’s between a third of your marriage to half of your marriage, depending on how long you’ve been married. So the longer you’ve been married, the closer you’re going to get to the halfway point for the number of years that you would get maintenance.

For instance, if you’ve been married for (20) years, you’ll probably get maintenance for (10) years. And if you are a stay at home mother, let’s say, and you haven’t worked in years and years and years and you’re in your 50s, chances are you’ll get 40% of your spouses salary for that ten years. Now you can’t– I’m not promising that’s exactly right because like I said, there are many complexities to the statute and you’d have to come in a really sit down with me and really look for me to come up with what that maintenance formula will look like. So don’t take it as gospel. I’m just saying, that’s kind of a thumbnail sketch of how we do maintenance currently here in Colorado.

By: Leslie Matthews

Mediation can often save the client money. The mediator has their hourly fee, of course the attorneys do as well. But mediation can last (4) hours, it can last (2) hours, it can last the whole day. And the nice thing about mediation is that you’re not spending time preparing witnesses, preparing trial exhibits, preparing for a trial.

Really where the bulk of the costs come in are preparing for trial. To the extent that you can settle things out in mediation. And understanding that there’s still preparation for mediation. You will save yourselves a lot of money by going through that process and coming out of it successfully.

By: Scott Goldman

In El Paso County following a temporary orders hearing, and before you can have a permanent orders hearing, you’re required to have mediation. We do have an Office of Dispute Resolution who provides mediation services for the county, and you’re entitled to use them for your mediation, or you can hire a private mediator. If you have an attorney it will be their decision as to whether or not you use private mediation or you use the county folks.

A mediator is a paid individual, typically an attorney who’s very familiar, in our case with family law, and they would try to assist you. If you’re using an Office of Dispute Resolution for example, they have a two-hour mediation where you each pay a fixed fee for the two hours, and you and your attorney would be in one room, the other party and their attorney if they have one, would be in the other room and the mediator would sort of do shuttle diplomacy going back and forth between the two, trying to resolve any remaining case issues that have not been settled so far.

If you can reach a mediation, a mediated agreement, you can write it up, file it with the court and you may not even have to go to court after that for a final orders hearing. So mediation can be a powerful tool to help you resolve remaining issues in divorce cases.

By: Ray Chamberland

Some people ask us whether or not you need to file for divorce before going to mediation. The truth of the matter is that you’re actually better off filing for divorce before you go to mediation even though there is no requirement that you do so.

Once you file for the divorce, there’s a whole bunch of requirements that are put in place in terms of exchanging financial documents so you should know exactly what it is you’re settling on. If that’s the goal of mediation, to settle on your case, then you need to be fully informed of the issues before you. You may not otherwise have the proper documentation before filing for divorce because there’s nothing in place that requires the other party to make disclosures to you about what you are trying to mediate.

While you don’t need to mediate prior to filing for divorce, it’s a good idea that you file for divorce and then go to mediation so you can ensure that you’re given the proper documentation and education on what it is you’re trying to settle.

By: Scott Goldman

Mediators do not tell people their legal rights, that’s why you have your legal representative, your lawyer, there with you to tell you what your legal rights are. A mediator hopefully has experience in the area of law that you’re mediating. Here obviously we’re talking about family law issues.

But sometimes the mediator doesn’t have that experience at all, and they’re there to facilitate a settlement. So to that extent the mediator not only is barred from telling you what your legal rights. But they also cannot be called in to court at a later date to talk about what the settlement discussions were about. That’s barred not only by Colorado statute, but by the Colorado “Rules of Evidence” as well.

By: Scott Goldman

One question I commonly get is from the people who’ve just been served with divorce papers. And the question typically is, I’ve just been served with divorce papers, should I sign the documents that my spouse’s attorney sent me? And the short answer is, no, don’t do it.

Talk to an attorney first. If your spouse already has an attorney it doesn’t matter how amicable things seem like they’re going to be, you’re better off seeking your own counsel. You’re not going to know all of the details of the divorce, and you may not be familiar with what rights you may be signing away. So in order to protect your rights, my advice is, Call an attorney. If you want to call me we can discuss the situation, I can listen to what the other attorney is proposing and if it’s fair and equitable I may be able to suggest to you, Sure, go ahead and sign it.

By: Ray Chamberland

An uncontested divorce is the best kind of divorce, to be honest with you. It means that there’s nothing that you’re fighting over, that you have to court for, and have a judge make a determination on. In other words, you’ve gone through your divorce process, but you and your spouse have been able to reach agreement on all of the important factors in your divorce. That includes your parenting plan, all of the issues surrounding how you’re going to deal with the children, all of the issues surrounding child support, maintenance, if that’s important in the case. And you’re able then to go to court with your final agreements and the judge essentially is going to just agree to what you’ve agreed to, unless there is something completely onerous or wrong with it.

In most cases, the judge will rubber stamp what you’ve agreed to. You may or may not have to go in and see the judge for a final hearing, that depends on whether or not you have attorneys, and whether there are child issues involved. But in most cases you’ll be able to avoid going to court altogether and your divorce agreement will become an order of the court just as written. And that would be an uncontested divorce. A contested divorce means that there’s something that you’re going to have to have the judge decide, and you’re going to have to go to court to have the judge decide that. And that the distinction between the two.

By: Leslie Matthews

In the State of Colorado, an affair really doesn’t have an affect on alimony. Or the fancy term that we use in the law is maintenance. Colorado is a no-fault state so the judge or magistrate is not really looking to whether or not somebody had an affair to determine how maintenance will be determined.

And as a matter of fact, these issues need to be determined without any reference to fault. So the affair doesn’t play a role in that. In child custody, you could have some influence on that issue. If you have a parent that has had an affair and now has brought that other person around the children. And that person starts to act as though they’re parent to the child or children, that can have an affect on how child custody is determined at the end of the day. But overall, the mere fact that somebody had an affair, generally doesn’t play a role in how custody is determined.

By: Scott Goldman

When you get divorced, you have a number of pieces of paper that need to be sent in to the court. A divorce decree is all of that final paperwork put together that’s made an order of the court. So, that final paperwork would include your parenting plan, it would include your separation agreement, it would include any other orders of the court, and that package, all put together, is your divorce decree.

Now what you can do once you have your divorce decree is you can enforce it, so it becomes as I said an order of the court, meaning that if somebody doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do based on that paperwork, you can go to the court with a contempt motion or an order to enforce and it actually is a court order. So when you’re at the end of the divorce you have a divorce decree, you have your legal rights essentially handled.

By: Leslie Matthews