Graham.Law Blog

We wrote last year on a Colorado Court of Appeals Thomas decision which held that courts should make a major decision, including school choice, when parents with joint decision-making are unable to agree. A recent unpublished decision from the appellate court holds that the choice can even include private school,…

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…

Limited Authority to Deviate from Colorado Child Support Statute In an unpublished decision, the Court of Appeals reversed a trial court which deviated downward from the Colorado Child Support Guidelines without making specific findings as to the reasons. While Colorado’s child support guidelines are not written in stone, the statute…

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…

It seems that contempt of court has had a lot of attention from the Colorado Court of Appeals in recent months – while the right to counsel issue has not arisen recently, we have written about decisions pertaining to contempt including the requirement that remedial contempt have a “purge clause”…

Parents owe their children a duty of support – this has long been recognized in Colorado’s child support statute (), and in every family law case imaginable. But can psychological parents, or other third party nonparents owe child support? Three years ago, in a groundbreaking decision, the Colorado Court of…

Simply being unemployed at the time of a hearing does not necessarily make imputing income to that parent appropriate. And that’s especially true when the parent is enrolled in full-time education. In Settles, both parents were full-time students at the time of divorce: the father, a former medical doctor who…

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…

On June 7, 2021, Governor Polis signed into law House Bill 21-1220, which contains the 2021 changes to the Colorado Child Support statute, as recommended by the Colorado Child Support Commission. The child support changes, which are the first since the 2019 changes to reflect the change in maintenance taxation,…

Capital gains counts as income for purposes of both child support, (5)(a)(I)(N), and maintenance, (8)(C)(I)(N). We even have a full article on capital gains and other investment income in the Colorado Family Law Guide discussing the various ways courts have interpreted this provision, and how they calculate capital gains. But…