Graham.Law Blog

I hesitate to even mention SB 20-027 because, like its predecessors, it will likely end up on the dust heap of failed attempts to statutorily shift Colorado into an equal-parenting-time state. But an attorney asked about it just this week, so I thought a little perspective was appropriate. Colorado law…

I missed writing about this at the time, but effective 2024, the Colorado Judicial Branch now includes unpublished Court of Appeals decisions (i.e. decisions not selected for publication) in its searchable database, Colorado Case Law Search, at research.coloradojudicial.gov. Unpublished Cases are Persuasive Authority When I wrote that it was permissible…

It’s common for the Colorado Assembly to tinker with the state’s child support law every couple of years, especially following the Colorado Child Support Commission’s report. Most of the time, child support changes are relatively modest, but in 2025, there were a few significant changes to the child support statute,…

Every couple of years, there are headlines about how debt causes divorce. This year’s sensationalistic headline on Men’s Journal (“Survey Finds Shocking Link Between Debt and Divorce“) had just the right amount of hyperbole to attract my attention, and a light morning induced me to go down that rabbit hole….

Since Colorado enacted the Uniform Dissolution of Marriage Act more than 50 years ago, dissolution of marriage cases have been “no-fault.” (See this blog post for more details about Colorado no-fault divorces and grounds for dissolution of marriage). One spouse’s misconduct or “fault”, including for domestic violence, was generally irrelevant…

I wrote a while back on a case concerning the importance of having a promissory note for a loan from a friend or family member because the spouse must prove that the payment was a loan to be repaid, not simply a gift. And in that post, I gave rather…

The North Dakota Supreme Court recently held that a prenuptial agreement signed just two days before the wedding was still valid and that the other spouse had sufficient time to confer with counsel because she had been presented with the agreement several weeks previously. Why does a North Dakota ruling…

Pay into Social Security, and you receive the benefits. Unless the system goes insolvent, this has long been everyone’s assumption about how the system worked. Unfortunately, a federal law dating back 40 years known as the “Windfall Elimination Provision” discriminated against employees who had paid into Social Security before transferring…

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…