Graham.Law Blog

In a brand-new case decided last week, the Colorado Court of Appeals held that a child’s funds held in a properly constituted Uniform Transfer to Minors Act (UTMA) account are not marital assets, and it was error for the trial court to divide the account between the parties on a…

Typically, when spouses own joint property, such as by jointly titling an asset, that creates a presumption at divorce that the property is a marital asset, see, e.g., Finer. A spouse who brings an asset into marriage (i.e., premarital assets) or was gifted property during the marriage can generally preserve…

Colorado law allows courts broad flexibility in deciding how to divide a pension at divorce, including determining which of the pension valuation methods to use. But a recent unpublished decision from the Colorado Court of Appeals held that the valuation must be consistent, and the family law judge cannot use…

When are two $10,000 assets not worth the same as each other? When the spouses are not considering the “divorce tax” on the assets awarded to them. We have a whole article in the Colorado Family Law Guide on the effects of this “divorce tax” on your property settlement, but…

There is no playing “hide the ball” in Colorado family law cases, and that means don’t have hidden assets, or even an accidentally omitted asset. The ethical obligations of family law attorneys, combined with court rules, require the parties to provide one-another with exhaustive disclosures. And when a party fails…

Hidden Assets and the Duty to Disclose in a Divorce The Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure require spouses in a divorce case to be fair with each other, and that includes providing exhaustive financial disclosures. And there is no hiding things – not only do the disclosures make this difficult…

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…

A new Colorado Court of Appeals decision is unusual in a couple of respects – it’s not often that a property division is reversed on appeal, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an appeal in a case where the marital estate was worth so little (even though to the…

Employment-related incentives is a complicated maze, with bonuses, stock options, deferred compensation, employer matching into retirement plans, etc. Sometimes they count as income, sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they are divisible property, while at other times they are not. The Court of Appeals, in what appears to be a case…

A recent decision from the Colorado Court of Appeals regarding Stock Appreciation Rights (SARs) seems rather obvious – perhaps that’s why the decision was not published. What is a SAR? With a Stock Appreciation Right, a company can pay employees with a bonus linked to the price of the company’s…