Graham.Law Blog

I have lost track of how many times the Colorado Assembly has modified the child support statute in the past couple of decades – it seems like about every other year or so. The good thing is that the changes are invariably improvements, as they clarify ambiguities which have been…

The Colorado Court of Appeals recently issued a decision of first impression in Colorado – whether straight-line depreciation could be deducted from a party’s rental income for purposes of child support or spousal maintenance. After all, a property owner does not actually write a check for depreciation from the rental…

This post was inspired by a reader who sent me an email questioning how Colorado can treat VA disability payments as income when federal law prohibits states from dividing VA benefits, and does not explicitly authorize states to count them as income. Every so often my firm receives profanity-laden emails…

The Colorado Court of Appeals just considered an issue of first impression, whether unrealized gains or dividends income in an investment account count as income for purposes of calculating child support and maintenance. And the answer to that was “no”, as mere “paper gains” are not included in a party’s…

The federal government has required all states to enact the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, or UIFSA, which is a law designed to sort out what was previously a jurisdictional mess between the states over who could impose, modify, or enforce child support or alimony obligations. Personal Jurisdiction – Basis…

Impute Income to Voluntarily Unemployed Spouse In most maintenance or child support cases, both spouses are working, or one has a legitimate reason to not be working, so the incomes for purposes of calculating family support are readily ascertainable. But in cases of “voluntary unemployment”, that is not necessarily the…

Colorado’s alimony statute has an expansive view of income – pretty much everything a person receives, including gifts, counts as income unless they are excluded under a provision of that statute – salary, commissions, bonuses, you name it: “‘Gross income’ means income from any source and includes, but is not…

Typically, courts have considered whether to award a spouse retroactive alimony back to the date of service of the summons, as that is the date the court acquires jurisdiction over the parties. But is that date written in stone, or can a court go back further? The issue of retroactive…

Per the Colorado child support statute, gross income includes “rents”, i.e. rental income. (5)(a)(I)(J). But surprisingly, there is little judicial guidance as to how exactly rental income should be calculated for purposes of child support or alimony. We last wrote about rent and family support exactly 3 years ago, when…

The Colorado Court of Appeals recently issued an unpublished decision where a successful surgeon testified he planned to pack it all in, sell his medical practice to his partner for $40K (the trial court found it was worth 44 times that value, or $1.76m), and forsake his compensation of $720K/yr…