Author: Carl O. Graham

Court of Appeals Upholds Denial of Veterans Benefits for Divorce Spouses In an unpublished Colorado Court of Appeals case, the trial court said “no” to veterans benefits for divorced spouses. The husband had been discharged from the military and was receiving monthly VA disability payments, but no military retirement benefits. The…

In 2014, Colorado’s maintenance statute was modified to provide trial courts with maintenance guidelines that set forth both an amount and duration of alimony based upon the parties’ incomes and duration of the marriage. Colorado has long had child support guidelines which create a presumptive amount of child support a court must…

Angelina Jolie Can’t Move Children In a reminder that the rich & famous are often no different from the rest of us when it comes to compliance with the laws, Angelina Jolie was recently in the news complaining that she was being blocked from moving out of the country by…

Man Requests Trial by Combat in Child Custody Case Our blog does not typically report on an out-of-state case, but then again, this is an unusual case, with one party requesting a highly unusual form of dispute resolution. The Des Moines Register reports that 40 year-old David Ostrom, who believed he had…

NOTE – On February 16, 2021, the Colorado Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and found that an Interspousal Transfer Deed does not create separate property out of a presumptively marital asset without satisfying one of the four statutory criteria. See our new blog post for more details. Interspousal…

The Colorado Court of Appeals just held that deferred compensation payments from an employer to a non-qualified plan (i.e. it’s not a retirement account under ERISA) do not count as income for purposes of child support. N.J.C. In the N.J.C. case, the father was a cardiologist, who earned a salary of $150,000/yr, plus…

Judges Need Educating Too! No matter how smart they are, judges have to learn family law somewhere (and at the risk of looking like I’m sucking up, I continue to marvel at how judges can retain so much knowledge about so many different areas of the law). Like any other…

The Court of Appeals just confirmed what should have already been clear from the statute – only a written separation agreement is enforceable in Colorado. Colorado has adopted the Uniform Premarital and Marital Agreements Act, as more completely discussed in the Prenuptial & Postnuptial Agreements article in the Colorado Family Law Guide. And…

Colorado in Shrinking Minority of States with Common Law Marriage We do not typically write about legal developments in other states – keeping on top of family law updates in Colorado keeps us plenty busy. But when your state is one of an already tiny pool of states which recognizes…

Rent is income – that’s pretty clear. The IRS requires you to declare rental income received on a Schedule E, and the Colorado child support statute’s definition of income includes “rents”. (5)(a)(I)(J). The maintenance statute has a similar provision. (8)(a)(I)(J). And Colorado courts will impute income to people who are voluntarily under-employed and…