Graham.Law Blog

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…

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 A recent unpublished decision from the appellate court holds that the choice can even include private school,…

In a recent unpublished decision, the Colorado Court of Appeals held that the trial court can consider as financial resources one spouse negotiated a sweetheart deal for discounted attorney fees in deciding whether to order that spouse, in turn, to pay attorney fees to the other party. While in most…

Security for Payment Ensures Compliance President Reagan once said about the Soviet missile program “trust by verify.” And in a wide variety of transactions you may see performance bonds, payment bonds, performance liens, security interests, etc. They ensure all are different measures to ensure security for payment. In Colorado family…

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…

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…

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…

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…