Colorado Marital Property Laws
Colorado sets each spouse’s own property aside and divides only the marital estate – and then C.R.S. § 14-10-113(4) moves every dollar a separate asset gained during the marriage into that estate, without ever asking why it gained it. Subsection (6) goes further in the other direction: a Colorado court has no jurisdiction to divide a public employee retirement benefit at all except upon the parties’ written agreement. Filing that agreement with the plan administrator inside ninety days is a separate duty under (6)(c)(I), not the jurisdictional condition. This page reads the value gap, then the pension machinery, then the four factors. General legal information, not legal advice.
Colorado in One Paragraph
Colorado is an equitable-distribution state under C.R.S. § 14-10-113. The court sets apart to each spouse his or her own property and divides the marital property without regard to marital misconduct, weighing four named factors. Marital property is everything acquired after the marriage except gifts, bequests, devises, descent, exchanges for premarital or gifted property, property acquired after a decree of legal separation, and property excluded by valid agreement – but subsection (4) then pulls in the increase in value of separate property during the marriage, with no test of whether anyone caused the increase. Gifts between spouses are presumed marital and take clear and convincing evidence to rebut. An interest as heir at law of a living person, or under a revocable third-party instrument, is not property and may not be considered at all. Property is valued at the decree, or at the disposition hearing if that comes first. Public employee pensions are divided only on the parties’ written agreement; that agreement then goes to the plan administrator within ninety days of the decree. We support these cases with lawful public-records asset and locate research on a stated permissible purpose, usually within 24 hours.
The Sentence That Moves Most of the Money
Subsection (4), and the question it deliberately never asks.
Colorado looks like an ordinary dual-classification state for exactly three subsections. C.R.S. § 14-10-113, in the official 2024 printout of title 14, tells the court to set apart to each spouse his or her property and divide the marital property; defines marital property as everything acquired after the marriage except gifts, bequests, devises, descent, exchanges for those, property acquired after a decree of legal separation and property excluded by valid agreement; and presumes that anything acquired during the marriage is marital no matter whose name is on it.
“Subject to the provisions of subsection (7) of this section, an asset of a spouse acquired prior to the marriage or in accordance with subsection (2)(a) or (2)(b) of this section shall be considered as marital property, for purposes of this article only, to the extent that its present value exceeds its value at the time of the marriage or at the time of acquisition if acquired after the marriage.” – C.R.S. § 14-10-113(4)
Read that sentence for what is missing from it. There is no requirement that either spouse worked on the asset. No requirement that marital money went into it. No distinction between growth you caused and growth that happened to you. Colorado never asks why the value went up. It asks only what the asset was worth on the wedding day and what it is worth now, and it treats the distance between those two figures as marital property.
That is a genuinely minority position, and the cleanest way to see it is to put three dual-classification states side by side on the identical question.
| The question | Colorado | Maine | Missouri |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does market drift on a premarital house become divisible? | Yes, in full | No | No |
| Does a renovation paid for with marital wages make it divisible? | Yes, but so would nothing at all | Yes | Yes, to the extent of the contribution |
| Does unpaid work by the owning spouse matter? | Irrelevant to the outcome | Yes, it defeats the exclusion | Yes, labour counts |
| Statutory citation | § 14-10-113(4) | 19-A M.R.S. § 953(2)(E) | § 452.330.2(5) RSMo |
| Practical effect on a long marriage | The largest divisible asset is often growth on property nobody argues about | Growth follows the asset | Growth is apportioned by contribution |
What the Gap Looks Like on Paper
Two figures decide it, and only one of them is usually documented.
Because subsection (4) is arithmetic rather than argument, a Colorado case turns on evidence in a way a discretionary standard does not. The court needs a value at the marriage or acquisition, and a value now. Whoever can prove the first number controls the size of the marital estate.
The date-of-marriage figure is the one nobody keeps. Couples keep the closing file for the house they bought together and lose the appraisal for the one that was already owned. Where that figure is missing, it has to be reconstructed from the record: the recorded deed and its consideration, the mortgage recorded against it at the time, the assessor’s valuation for the year of the marriage, and any transfer declaration on file with the county.
The present figure carries its own trap. Subsection (5) sets valuation as of the date of the decree, or the date of the hearing on disposition if that hearing comes first. A number pulled a year before the decree is not the statutory number, and in a volatile market that difference is the whole dispute.
The depletion limb runs the other way. Factor (d) in subsection (1) asks the court to consider not only increases and decreases in the value of a spouse’s separate property during the marriage but also the depletion of the separate property for marital purposes. A spouse who spent down an inherited account to carry the household has a statutory hook for saying so, and it is the only factor in the Colorado list that points at property the court is not dividing.
The Pension a Colorado Court Cannot Divide
Subsection (6), the ninety-day clock, and a jurisdiction bar nobody writes about.
Colorado employs a very large number of people through the state, its counties, its school districts and its municipalities, so public-employee retirement benefits sit in an enormous share of Colorado divorces. Subsection (6) of the same section governs them, and it ends with a sentence that should stop anyone assuming a judge can simply order a split.
“A court shall have no jurisdiction to enter an order dividing a public employee retirement benefit except upon written agreement of the parties pursuant to this subsection (6).” – C.R.S. § 14-10-113(6)(f)
Not a preference for agreement. An absence of jurisdiction. If the parties do not sign, the benefit is not divided by that mechanism at all, and the same subsection removes the court’s power to modify an approved agreement unless both sides agree in writing to the modification.
What follows from that is a filing exercise with real deadlines attached, and the deadlines are in the statute rather than in local practice.
Ninety days to file the agreement
Subsection (6)(c)(I): the parties submit the written agreement to the plan administrator within ninety days after entry of the decree and the permanent orders on property distribution.
One formula, chosen from five
Subsection (6)(c)(III): an agreement dividing a defined benefit plan must contain only one method. The choices are a fixed monetary amount; a fixed percentage of the payment; the time-rule formula, being months of service credit during the marriage over months of service credit at retirement; the same ratio measured to the date of the decree instead; or any other mutually agreed method stating an amount or percentage.
A hundred and twenty days to pay out
Subsection (6)(c)(II)(D): for a defined contribution plan the alternate payee’s share must be distributed within one hundred twenty days after the plan receives a certified court order approving the agreement, unless plan rules allow the plan to hold the share.
Thirty days before the first payment
Subsection (6)(c)(II)(L): the certified order must reach the plan at least thirty days before the plan may make its first payment under it.
No early money
Subsection (6)(c)(II)(F): a defined benefit plan cannot be required to pay the alternate payee before payments start to the participant, or before the participant turns sixty-five or actually retires, whichever comes first.
An address the statute insists on
Subsection (6)(c)(II)(B): the agreement must state the full legal name of each plan and the name, social security number and last-known mailing address of both the participant and the alternate payee.
That last requirement is where a records problem becomes a jurisdictional one. An agreement missing a last-known mailing address for a spouse who has moved on and left no forwarding trail is an agreement that cannot be completed, and without a completed agreement subsection (6)(f) leaves the court with no power over the pension. The ninety-day clock is running while somebody looks.
Subsection (6)(e) adds a point that reassures plan administrators and surprises everyone else: complying with an agreement under this subsection does not drag a Colorado public plan into the parts of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act that do not otherwise touch governmental plans, and a plan that reasonably complies is relieved of liability for the payments it makes.
Watch: Dividing Property in Colorado
The value gap, and the pension a judge cannot touch without a signature.
Watch Overview
A Gift From Your Spouse Is Presumed Marital
Subsection (7)(a) inverts the presumption everyone expects.
In most dual-classification states, property received as a gift is the archetypal separate asset, and a gift from one spouse to the other is simply a gift. Colorado wrote the opposite rule and attached a heightened burden to it.
“except with respect to gifts of nonbusiness tangible personal property, gifts from one spouse to another, whether in trust or not, shall be presumed to be marital property and not separate property. This presumption may be rebutted by clear and convincing evidence.” – C.R.S. § 14-10-113(7)(a)
Two things do the work here. The first is the direction of the presumption: the spouse claiming the gift was separate is the one who has to prove it. The second is the standard, which is clear and convincing rather than the ordinary balance of probabilities that governs most classification disputes.
The carve-out is narrower than it sounds. Nonbusiness tangible personal property covers the jewellery, the car, the artwork on the wall. It does not cover a transfer of shares, an assignment of an interest in a family company, a deed into one spouse’s sole name, or a gift routed through a trust, all of which the subsection expressly reaches with the words “whether in trust or not”.
What a Colorado Court May Not Even Look At
Subsection (7)(b) does not discount an expectancy. It deletes it.
Every state has to decide what to do about the spouse who is going to inherit something eventually. The usual answer is that a mere expectancy is not property but may colour the court’s view of that person’s future circumstances. Colorado closed both doors in one sentence.
Under subsection (7)(b), neither “property” nor “an asset of a spouse” includes any interest a party may have as an heir at law of a living person, or any interest under any donative third-party instrument which is amendable or revocable – the statute names third-party wills, revocable trusts, life insurance and retirement benefit instruments – and then adds that no such interest “shall be considered as an economic circumstance or other factor”.
The operative word is revocable. An interest under an irrevocable instrument is not what this subsection is about. A named beneficiary of a trust that the settlor can rewrite tomorrow, or of a policy the owner can redirect with a form, holds nothing the Colorado court is permitted to weigh, even indirectly through factor (c) on economic circumstances.
Subsection (7)(c) fixes the reach: these rules apply to all causes of action filed on or after July 1, 2002, and to earlier ones in which no final property disposition order had been entered by that date, a final order meaning one whose appeal time has expired or whose appeals have concluded.
Four Factors, and the Phrase That Is Not There
Colorado wrote fault out of the property question in the first sentence.
The instruction in subsection (1) is that the court divides marital property without regard to marital misconduct, in such proportions as it deems just, after considering all relevant factors including four that the statute names. Missouri, by contrast, lists the conduct of the parties during the marriage as its fourth factor. Same regime, opposite instinct.
Contribution to acquisition, including as homemaker
Factor (a). The homemaker clause is not decorative; it is the statutory answer to an argument that only earned income built the estate.
The value of the property set apart to each spouse
Factor (b). The separate estates are not divided, but their size is expressly relevant to how the marital estate gets split. A spouse walking away with a large separate portfolio is not in the same position as one walking away with none, and the statute tells the court to notice.
Economic circumstances when the division takes effect
Factor (c), which singles out the desirability of awarding the family home, or the right to live in it for reasonable periods, to the spouse with whom any children reside the majority of the time. Note the tense: circumstances at the time the division becomes effective, not at separation.
Increases, decreases and depletion of separate property
Factor (d), and the twin of subsection (4). It captures both the growth the court is converting and the separate wealth a spouse burned through on the family, which is the one place a Colorado court is invited to give credit for spending your own money on the marriage.
Where the Colorado Rules Meet the Record
Two dates, one address, and a filing deadline.
Almost everything distinctive about Colorado turns into an evidence problem. Subsection (4) needs a value from the date of the marriage. Subsection (5) needs a value from the date of the decree. Subsection (6) needs a last-known mailing address inside ninety days. None of those is a legal argument; all of them are records.
Which raises a fair question about the people doing the looking. This is a public-records research practice and nothing more. Nobody here holds a Colorado private investigator’s licence and no investigative licensure is claimed for the work. When we need a value from a county assessor or a document from a clerk and recorder, we request it as ourselves, through the office’s own process. Nobody here telephones a retirement plan posing as a member, a beneficiary or plan counsel to get a benefit statement released, and nobody pretexts a Colorado public office for a document that has a request form. Databases are queried only after a purpose the law permits has been written down, and the query itself sits inside FCRA, GLBA and the driver-record restrictions of the DPPA.
What comes back is a research file for a property division. It is not a consumer report, and it must not be used to decide whether to employ somebody, rent to them, lend to them or insure them; those are decisions for a consumer reporting agency operating under that statute, which is not what this firm is.
Clerk and Recorder Chains
Deeds, deeds of trust, releases and transfer declarations, pulled to establish what an asset was worth and what was owed against it at the date of the marriage.
Historic Valuation Records
County assessor records for the marriage year, which is frequently the only surviving evidence of the figure subsection (4) measures from.
An Address the Agreement Can Use
Address research aimed at the last-known mailing address subsection (6)(c)(II)(B) requires, so a pension agreement can actually be completed and filed in time.
Six Ways a Colorado Division Goes Wrong on the Facts
Every one of these is a records failure rather than a legal one.
No Date-of-Marriage Value
Subsection (4) measures from a number that was never recorded, so the whole increase gets argued from memory.
Valuing on the Wrong Day
A figure from the separation date rather than the decree date, which is not what subsection (5) specifies.
The Ninety Days Run Out
A pension agreement that cannot be filed because one party’s mailing address is unknown when the clock starts.
Treating Appreciation as Passive
Importing another state’s active-versus-passive test into a subsection that contains no causation element at all.
A Transfer Assumed to Be a Gift
Shares or an entity interest moved between spouses, which subsection (7)(a) presumes marital unless clear and convincing evidence says otherwise.
Chasing an Expectancy
Time spent on a revocable trust or a beneficiary designation the court is forbidden to consider at all.
How a Colorado Request Runs Here
Four steps, and the first one is a gate rather than a formality.
Tell Us the Permissible Purpose
A pending Colorado dissolution or legal separation, enforcement of permanent orders, or service of process. It is recorded before anything is searched, and without one the request ends at this step.
Give Us the Marriage Date and the Counties
Subsection (4) is measured from the marriage date, so that date and the counties where property sat then and sits now are the two things that shape the search.
We Pull and Corroborate
Clerk and recorder chains, assessor history, entity filings and lawful database sources, each finding attributed to the office that issued it.
You Get Two Dated Figures
A sourced picture your Colorado attorney can use for the value at the marriage and the value now, plus an address if a subsection (6) agreement needs one.
Who Sends Us Colorado Files
We produce the record; your attorney argues the proportion.
Divorcing Spouses
Two dated values, not one
Family Law Counsel
Evidence for subsection (4)
Paralegals
Assessor history by marriage year
QDRO and Plan Specialists
The address an agreement needs
Process Servers
A current Colorado address
Fiduciaries
Entity interests traced to a person
One category of request is refused whatever the reason offered. Where somebody has gone quiet because they are frightened – domestic violence, a protective order, a stalking history, or any signal that a person is keeping distance to stay safe – we do not run the locate, and a filing deadline does not change that. Subsection (6) gives ninety days to file a pension agreement; ninety days of pressure is not a reason to hand somebody an address. We say no, and we point the requester to counsel and to advocacy organisations who work on exactly this. Readers comparing Colorado’s value-gap rule with the schemes in other states will find them collected in our survey of marital property laws by state. Where property looks as though it has been moved rather than simply forgotten, our guide to finding hidden assets covers the general techniques, and the address side of the work runs through our skip tracing desk, usually answered within 24 hours.
Once permanent orders exist and are not being honoured, the question stops being classification and starts being collection; that is the subject of Colorado judgment collection, and what a creditor can actually reach is set out in Colorado asset exemptions.
What We Deliver in Colorado
Colorado decides a property case on two numbers and a deadline. Everything we hand over carries a date, an attribution and the Colorado office or lawful source it came from, so the figure your attorney puts in front of the court can be shown to have come from somewhere. Twenty years of doing exactly this, and never on an unstated purpose.
Colorado Property Division: Direct Answers
Is Colorado a community property state?
No. Colorado is an equitable-distribution state. Under C.R.S. § 14-10-113(1) the court sets apart to each spouse his or her own property and divides only the marital property, in the proportions the court deems just and without regard to marital misconduct. Equitable does not mean equal. This is general legal information rather than legal advice.
Does my spouse get half the house I owned before the marriage?
Not the house, but potentially all of what it gained. C.R.S. § 14-10-113(4) treats a premarital asset as marital property to the extent its present value exceeds its value at the date of the marriage. The value you brought in stays yours; the growth on top of it is in the divisible estate. What is unusual about Colorado is that the subsection asks no question at all about why the value rose.
Is an inheritance marital property in Colorado?
The inheritance itself is separate under § 14-10-113(2)(a). Its growth during the marriage is not: subsection (4) applies to property acquired under subsection (2)(a) the same way it applies to premarital property, measured from the date of acquisition. An inherited share portfolio received early in a long marriage can therefore be mostly separate in origin and substantially marital in value.
Does it matter whether I did anything to increase the value?
No, and that is the point most summaries get wrong. Subsection (4) contains no active or passive test and no causation element. Appreciation driven purely by the market counts the same as appreciation you created by renovating or managing. Missouri and Maine both ask why the value rose and reach different answers; Colorado does not ask.
How is a PERA or other public pension divided in a Colorado divorce?
By the parties’ written agreement submitted to the plan, not by a judicial order alone. C.R.S. § 14-10-113(6)(f) says a court has no jurisdiction to enter an order dividing a public employee retirement benefit except upon written agreement of the parties under subsection (6), and no jurisdiction to modify such an order unless the parties agree in writing. The agreement goes to the plan administrator within ninety days after entry of the decree and the permanent orders.
Is a gift from my spouse separate property in Colorado?
Usually not. C.R.S. § 14-10-113(7)(a) presumes that gifts from one spouse to the other, whether in trust or not, are marital property, and that presumption can only be rebutted by clear and convincing evidence. The exception is gifts of nonbusiness tangible personal property, which is what keeps a ring or a watch out of the argument.
Can the court consider what I stand to inherit from a living parent?
No. Under § 14-10-113(7)(b) an interest as an heir at law of a living person, and any interest under an amendable or revocable third-party instrument such as a third-party will, a revocable trust, life insurance or a retirement beneficiary designation, is not property and may not be considered as an economic circumstance or any other factor. Subsection (7) applies to actions filed on or after July 1, 2002.
When is property valued in a Colorado divorce?
C.R.S. § 14-10-113(5) sets the date by statute: as of the date of the decree, or as of the date of the hearing on disposition of property if that hearing comes first. Colorado legislating the date is itself unusual; several states leave valuation timing entirely to the trial judge.
Get the Two Figures Colorado Actually Measures
Send us the marriage date, the counties and your permissible purpose. We return a sourced record your Colorado attorney can put in front of the court.
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