Graham.Law Blog

The Colorado Court of Appeals recently issued an unpublished decision where a successful surgeon testified he planned to pack it all in, sell his medical practice to his partner for $40K (the trial court found it was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…

If you have to litigate a case involving child support arrears, you are going to wish the payments went through the Colorado Family Support Registry, or FSR for short. The registry is a state agency which receives child support and alimony payments from the obligor (that’s the parent or spouse…

We’ve written about this before – simply proving that the other side failed to pay court-ordered support is not sufficient for contempt of court. The court must also find that he had the ability to pay during the time he failed to pay, and, just as important, that he has…

After a divorce in Colorado, one spouse may be ordered to pay the other periodic payments – with child support or spousal maintenance (i.e. alimony). And when there is a disparity in assets awarded to the spouses, the court will typically order a property equalization payment from the spouse with…

It seems the issue of what counts as a financial resource in a contempt or maintenance case still results in seemingly contradictory decisions from the courts. We recently wrote a post discussing the Sheehan case, where the Colorado Court of Appeals held that a trial judge could not find a…

Although less common than it once was, with long-term marriages courts may still order maintenance for an indefinite period of time – i.e. with no expiration date. While such awards may colloquially be known as “lifetime” maintenance, that’s not strictly speaking accurate, because either former spouse could still file a…

The Colorado Court of Appeals last week issued a new ruling on the interplay between imputation of income and voluntary unemployment which will make bringing contempt cases for non-support more complicated. (Note that this particular case involved voluntary underemployment, not voluntary unemployment, but the analysis is the same either way)….

While the federal minimum wage remains stuck at the same $7.25/hr it has been since 2009, many states have now left that figure in the dust, Colorado included. The Colorado Department of Labor has announced that on January 1, 2022 the state minimum wage will increase to $12.56/hr, from the…

When a judge awards maintenance as part of a final orders in a dissolution of marriage case, the maintenance is subject to modification “upon a showing of changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unfair” (1)(a). However, when the spouses reach an agreement for maintenance, they…

We have written about cases where Colorado’s appellate courts have reversed alimony awards from trial courts which simply applied the maintenance guidelines without evidence or specific findings on the need for maintenance. Now, the Colorado Court of Appeals has held, in a case of first impression, that courts are permitted…