Family agreements and planning under Colorado law Family agreements and planning under Colorado law

Since 2014, Colorado premarital and marital (postnuptial) agreements run under one statute — C.R.S. §§ 14-2-301 to -313 — with consumer-protection-grade formation rules: both parties must have access to independent legal counsel (defined with real teeth: time to locate and afford a lawyer, or a meaningful waiver), adequate financial disclosure, and — if a party is unrepresented — a conspicuous plain-language notice of the rights being waived. Certain terms are void outright: provisions penalizing a party for initiating divorce, limiting child support, or restricting domestic-violence remedies. Agreements that clear the statute, though, are robustly enforceable — and in Colorado they carry extra weight, because the default they modify includes the appreciation rule: without an agreement, the growth of your separate business during the marriage is marital property. A Colorado prenup is how that rule becomes optional. Full treatment: prenuptial and postnuptial agreements in Colorado.

Colorado recognizes common-law marriage under the refined Hogsett v. Neale framework — mutual agreement to be married plus conduct manifesting it, assessed flexibly (no checklist of joint accounts required, no cohabitation minimum). The consequences are total: a common-law marriage is a full marriage, dissolved only by a full dissolution, with property division, maintenance, and inheritance rights attached. Which gives Colorado couples a planning question no one else in our footprint faces: unmarried partners here need agreements both to create the rights they want and to document the marriage they're deliberately not entering. A well-drafted Colorado cohabitation agreement does both jobs. Details: cohabitation agreements in Colorado.

Colorado adoption runs through the Children's Code (Title 19, Article 5): stepparent, kinship, custodial, agency, and — long established here — second-parent adoptions. Colorado features expedited procedures for stepparent and kinship placements, relinquishment counseling requirements before a birth parent's rights are surrendered, and, for unmarried fathers, notice procedures tied to paternity filings. Details: adoption in Colorado.

Colorado's estate statutes do broad automatic cleanup at divorce — C.R.S. § 15-11-804 revokes revocable dispositions to a former spouse, beneficiary designations included (ERISA plans excepted, as everywhere). Until the decree, though, a spouse's rights run at full strength — including in a common-law marriage a court hasn't yet declared. Coordination: estate planning and divorce in Colorado.

Brown Carrington drafts Colorado agreements against the state's two big defaults — the appreciation rule and common-law marriage — with UPMAA-grade formation.