STRATEGIES TO REDUCE OR AVOID COLORADO ALIMONY
ON THIS PAGE
- How Spousal Maintenance Works In Colorado
- How The Advisory Guidelines Calculate Maintenance
- Lawful Ways To Reduce Or Avoid A Maintenance Obligation
- Situations Where Maintenance May Not Be Ordered
- When Maintenance Ends Or Changes
- Taxes And Spousal Maintenance
- Talk To A Colorado Springs Family Law Attorney
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Sources
HOW SPOUSAL MAINTENANCE WORKS IN COLORADO
Colorado law uses the term spousal maintenance rather than alimony, though the two words describe the same thing. Maintenance is money one spouse pays the other after a dissolution of marriage, legal separation, or declaration of invalidity.
Maintenance is not automatic. It is ordered only when a party requests it and the court makes the specific findings the statute requires.
Understanding those requirements is the starting point for anyone hoping to reduce or avoid a maintenance obligation. The rules below come from C.R.S. 14-10-114, the statute that governs maintenance in every Colorado district court, including the Fourth Judicial District here in El Paso County. Maintenance is one of several issues resolved in a Colorado Springs divorce, alongside property division, parenting time, and child support.
The Threshold Question The Court Must Answer First
Before any calculation happens, the court has to clear a threshold. Under C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(d), a court may award maintenance only if it finds that the spouse requesting it lacks sufficient property, including the marital property assigned to that spouse, to provide for their reasonable needs.
The court must also find that the requesting spouse is unable to support themselves through appropriate employment, or is the custodian of a child whose condition or circumstances make it inappropriate for that spouse to work outside the home.
If that threshold is not met, the analysis stops there and no maintenance is ordered. This is the single most important provision for anyone trying to defeat a maintenance claim.
Read the wording carefully. The question is whether the property apportioned to that spouse is sufficient to provide for reasonable needs, not whether the spouse has spent it down first.
The court is also required to make written or oral findings before granting or denying maintenance. Those findings cover each party's gross income, the marital property apportioned to each party, each party's financial resources, reasonable financial need as established during the marriage, and whether the award would be deductible to the payor and taxable to the recipient.
Types Of Spousal Maintenance
Colorado's statute does not create a formal menu of maintenance categories. Practitioners and courts use descriptive labels for awards that serve different purposes, and it helps to know what those labels mean.
- Temporary maintenance. Support paid while the case is pending, addressed in C.R.S. 14-10-114(4). The guideline term table does not apply to temporary orders, so the court sets the term itself. A temporary award does not prejudice either party at permanent orders.
- Rehabilitative maintenance. Support for a defined period while the recipient completes education, training, or a return to the workforce.
- Reimbursement maintenance. Support that compensates a spouse for a contribution made during the marriage, such as funding the other spouse's degree or professional training.
- Indefinite maintenance. Colorado does not use the phrase permanent alimony. When a marriage exceeds twenty years, the court may order maintenance for a specified term of years or for an indefinite term under C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(b)(II)(A).
- Maintenance in gross. A lump sum rather than monthly payments. Nothing in the statute prohibits it, and it can involve a property transfer instead of cash. Do not assume a lump sum is beyond the court's reach: the Colorado Supreme Court held in Sinn v. Sinn that section 14-10-122 authorizes modification of awards traditionally labeled maintenance in gross, even where the decree does not expressly reserve the power to modify. Whether payments count as maintenance or as property division turns on their purpose under the totality of the circumstances.
HOW THE ADVISORY GUIDELINES CALCULATE MAINTENANCE
Colorado publishes an advisory guideline formula. It is worth being precise about what the formula does and does not do, because this is where most online explanations go wrong.
When The Guidelines Apply
The guideline amount and term apply only when the marriage lasted at least three years and the parties' combined annual adjusted gross income does not exceed $240,000.
If combined annual adjusted gross income exceeds $240,000, the guideline calculation does not apply at all. Under C.R.S. 14-10-114(3.5), the court instead works from the statutory factors, though it may still consider the guideline term.
Even where the guidelines do apply, they are advisory only. C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(e) states plainly that the guidelines do not create a presumptive amount or term, and that the court retains discretion to determine what is fair and equitable based on the totality of the circumstances.
The Guideline Formula
The calculation runs in two steps, and it is set out on the El Paso County advisement form FCF 425 that parties receive in local dissolution cases.
Step one produces a base figure: take 40 percent of the parties' combined monthly adjusted gross income, then subtract the lower earning party's monthly adjusted gross income. If the result is a negative number, the guideline amount is zero.
Step two adjusts that figure for tax treatment. Where the award is not deductible to the payor and not taxable to the recipient, which is the norm for orders entered today, the guideline amount is 80 percent of the base figure when combined monthly adjusted gross income is $10,000 or less, and 75 percent of the base figure when combined monthly adjusted gross income is more than $10,000 but not more than $20,000.
The Guideline Term
Term is driven by the length of the marriage, measured in whole months from the first day of the month following the marriage date to the date of the decree.
The statutory table starts at 36 months of marriage, which yields a guideline term of 11 months, and rises to 240 months of marriage, which yields a guideline term of 120 months. The percentage climbs from 31 percent of the marriage length at three years to 50 percent at twelve and a half years, then holds at 50 percent.
Above twenty years, the court may set a term of years or an indefinite term. It cannot go below the twenty year guideline term without making specific findings that support the shorter period.
What Counts As Income
Adjusted gross income is a defined term, and it is narrower than most people expect. Under C.R.S. 14-10-114(8)(a), it means gross income less preexisting court ordered child support actually paid, preexisting court ordered maintenance actually paid, and the statutory adjustment for other children a party is legally responsible to support.
Federal income tax is not subtracted. Neither is rent, insurance, or any other living expense. Starting from take home pay is one of the most common and most costly mistakes in a maintenance dispute.
Gross income itself is broad. It includes salaries, wages, commissions, self employment income, bonuses, dividends, severance, royalties, rents, interest, trust distributions, annuity payments, capital gains, Social Security benefits, workers' compensation, unemployment and disability benefits, monetary gifts, and more.
Several exclusions matter in practice. Gross income does not include child support received, means tested public benefits, or income from additional jobs that push a party beyond full time employment. Overtime counts only where the employer requires it as a condition of employment.
Two retirement rules are frequently misstated. Pension and retirement benefits actually received count as income only if they were not already divided as property in the same case. Earnings or gains inside a retirement account are not income unless a party takes a distribution, though the court may consider a distribution that could have been taken without an early withdrawal penalty.
LAWFUL WAYS TO REDUCE OR AVOID A MAINTENANCE OBLIGATION
There is no trick that makes a maintenance claim disappear. What exists is a set of legitimate arguments and planning tools, each grounded in the statute, that can reduce an award or defeat one entirely.
Premarital And Marital Agreements
Spouses may waive or limit maintenance by agreement, in writing or orally in court, and may do so in a premarital or marital agreement under Colorado's Uniform Premarital and Marital Agreements Act.
These agreements carry a specific vulnerability. Under C.R.S. 14-2-309(5), a maintenance provision that is otherwise enforceable is still unenforceable to the extent it is unconscionable at the time of enforcement. The court decides unconscionability as a matter of law.
An agreement can also fail outright if consent was involuntary or the product of duress, if a party lacked access to independent legal representation, if an unrepresented party did not receive the required notice of waiver of rights, or if a party did not get adequate financial disclosure before signing.
The practical lesson is that a total waiver signed decades before a long marriage ends is more likely to be attacked than a provision that limits amount and duration in a measured way. Drafting matters enormously here.
One more protection worth knowing. Where a case falls within the guidelines and a party is not represented by an attorney or a licensed legal paraprofessional, the court will not approve a maintenance waiver or an off guideline agreement unless that party confirms awareness of the guidelines.
Adjusting The Property Division Instead
This is the most underused approach on the list. C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(f) allows the court to award additional marital property to the recipient spouse, or otherwise adjust the division of property or debt, in order to alleviate the need for maintenance or reduce its amount or term.
The distribution of marital property is also an express factor in the maintenance analysis. A property settlement structured with maintenance in mind can shorten or eliminate a monthly obligation, which many payors prefer to years of payments.
Showing The Other Spouse Can Support Themselves
Because the threshold turns on whether the requesting spouse can meet reasonable needs through appropriate employment, evidence about earning capacity is central.
That evidence often includes employment history, education and credentials, documentation of the job search, and a vocational evaluation by a qualified expert who can testify to realistic positions and pay in the local market.
Appropriate employment is not measured against a bare subsistence standard. Both the statute and the El Paso County advisement form frame the question around reasonable financial need and the lifestyle established during the marriage, not the minimum a person could survive on.
Voluntary Unemployment And Underemployment
If a party is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, maintenance is calculated on potential income rather than actual income. That cuts both ways and can help a payor facing an inflated claim.
The statute limits the argument in important ways. Potential income is not determined for a party who is physically or mentally incapacitated, who is caring for a child under twenty four months for whom the parties owe a joint legal responsibility, or who is incarcerated with a sentence of 180 days or more.
A party is also not considered underemployed where the job is temporary and reasonably intended to lead to higher income, where the work reflects a good faith career choice, or where the party is enrolled in an educational program reasonably expected to produce a degree or certification within a reasonable time and lead to higher income.
An argument that ignores these carve outs tends to damage credibility with the court rather than help.
SITUATIONS WHERE MAINTENANCE MAY NOT BE ORDERED
Short Marriages
The advisory guidelines simply do not apply to marriages shorter than three years. That is a real advantage, but it is not a bar.
Under C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(h), the court may still award maintenance in a short term marriage, including one under three years, where the distribution of marital property is not enough to reach an equitable result. In that situation the court may look to the guidelines and the statutory factors, and must make findings supporting whatever it orders.
Comparable Incomes
Where both spouses earn enough to meet their own reasonable needs without support from the other, the threshold under C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(d) is not satisfied and maintenance should not be ordered.
The guideline formula reflects this. When 40 percent of combined monthly adjusted gross income does not exceed the lower earner's monthly adjusted gross income, the guideline amount is zero.
Financial resources beyond wages count in this analysis, including actual or potential income from separate or marital property.
Waiver By Agreement
Parties may agree to waive maintenance in a separation agreement, subject to the protections described above for unrepresented parties and the unconscionability review that applies to premarital and marital agreements.
WHEN MAINTENANCE ENDS OR CHANGES
Automatic Termination
Unless the parties agree otherwise in writing or the decree expressly provides otherwise, C.R.S. 14-10-122(2)(a) terminates the obligation to pay future maintenance on the earliest of four events.
- The death of either party.
- The end of the maintenance term, unless a motion to modify is filed before the term expires.
- The remarriage of the recipient, or the recipient's entry into a civil union.
- A court order terminating maintenance.
Remarriage means the status of remarriage, and the Colorado Supreme Court has held in In re Cargill and Rollins that this includes common law as well as ceremonial marriage.
Two related points are widely misunderstood. First, unmarried cohabitation is not remarriage, and under In re Marriage of Dwyer it does not by itself suspend, reduce, or terminate maintenance. Second, the statutory presumption that maintenance ends on remarriage can be overcome without magic words: under In re Marriage of Parsons, a general nonmodification clause in a separation agreement is enough, and the absence of express termination language is not fatal where the intent is evident from the agreement or decree as a whole. Express language is still the safer drafting choice.
Modification
Absent a written agreement to the contrary, maintenance may be modified only as to installments accruing after the motion is filed, and only on a showing of changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the existing terms unfair.
A modification is generally effective as of the filing date of the motion unless the court finds that would cause undue hardship or substantial injustice. The party seeking modification carries a heavy burden, and any attempt to limit or preclude the court's power to modify must be stated in language that is specific and unequivocal. If you are weighing a change to an existing order, our post decree modification attorneys can assess whether the standard is met.
Retirement
Retirement does not end maintenance automatically. A payor whose income is reduced or ends because of retirement after reaching full retirement age is entitled to a rebuttable presumption that the retirement was taken in good faith.
Full retirement age means the age at which the payor would be eligible for full Social Security retirement benefits. It does not mean early retirement age, and it does not mean the age that would produce a maximum delayed benefit.
The presumption is not the end of the analysis. Under In re Marriage of Thorstad, once the payor establishes it, the burden shifts to the recipient to show the decision was not made in good faith, and the court then folds its finding on good faith into the separate question of whether circumstances have changed substantially and continuously enough to make the original order unfair.
A Newer Factor Worth Knowing
Effective August 6, 2025, Senate Bill 25-116 added a factor to the maintenance analysis. Courts now consider whether a spouse engaged in domestic violence, coercive control, economic abuse, litigation abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, or unlawful sexual behavior against the other spouse.
This sits alongside the longstanding rule that a maintenance award itself is made without regard to marital misconduct. Anyone relying on older articles about Colorado maintenance should be aware the factor list has changed. Where safety is also an issue, a protection order may need to be addressed on a separate and faster track.
TAXES AND SPOUSAL MAINTENANCE
The federal tax treatment of maintenance changed with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and a great deal of outdated information about it is still circulating.
For divorce or separation instruments executed after December 31, 2018, maintenance is not deductible by the paying spouse and is not included in the receiving spouse's income. The same treatment applies to a pre-2019 instrument modified after that date if the modification expressly says the new rules apply.
Instruments executed on or before December 31, 2018 continue to follow the prior rules, under which payments were deductible to the payor and taxable to the recipient, so long as they were not modified in the way described above.
This is why C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(b)(I) contains two different calculations. The 80 percent and 75 percent multipliers exist to account for awards that carry no deduction for the payor.
Colorado law addressed the transition directly. Under C.R.S. 14-10-114(5)(c), the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is not by itself a substantial and continuing change of circumstance for modifying orders entered before that law took effect.
TALK TO A COLORADO SPRINGS FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY
Maintenance outcomes turn on the findings a court makes about income, property, and need. Those findings are shaped by the evidence each side puts in front of the judge.
Moran, Allen & Associates Family Law Attorneys handles maintenance disputes in El Paso County and Teller County, on both sides of the issue. We can review your income picture, assess how the threshold requirement and the guidelines apply to your situation, and discuss whether a property based resolution makes sense.
Call our Colorado Springs office at (719) 447-0762 to schedule a consultation.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What Is Spousal Maintenance In Colorado?
Spousal maintenance is the Colorado term for what many people call alimony. It is money one spouse pays the other after a dissolution of marriage, legal separation, or declaration of invalidity, ordered under C.R.S. 14-10-114 when a party requests it and the court makes the required findings.
How Do Colorado Courts Decide Whether To Award Maintenance?
The court first makes findings on each party's gross income, the marital property apportioned to each party, each party's financial resources, reasonable financial need as established during the marriage, and the tax treatment of any award. It then determines an amount and term that is fair and equitable, considering the advisory guidelines where they apply, the statutory factors, and whether the requesting spouse meets the threshold requirement.
Can I Avoid Paying Maintenance If My Spouse Has Sufficient Property?
Possibly. Under C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(d), maintenance may be awarded only if the spouse seeking it lacks sufficient property, including the marital property apportioned to that spouse, to provide for their reasonable needs, and is unable to support themselves through appropriate employment. The test is whether the apportioned property is sufficient, not whether the spouse has spent it down first.
Does A Higher Income Automatically Mean I Will Pay Maintenance?
No. Income disparity alone does not create an obligation. The threshold requirement must be met first, and the court then weighs the full list of statutory factors before deciding on any amount and term.
Do The Advisory Guidelines Bind The Judge?
No. C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(e) states that the guidelines do not create a presumptive amount or term, and the court has discretion to order what is fair and equitable based on the totality of the circumstances. The guidelines also do not apply where the marriage lasted less than three years or combined annual adjusted gross income exceeds $240,000.
Is Spousal Maintenance Taxable In Colorado?
For divorce or separation instruments executed after December 31, 2018, maintenance is not deductible by the payor and not included in the recipient's income for federal tax purposes. Instruments executed on or before December 31, 2018 generally follow the prior rules unless they were modified after that date in a way that expressly adopts the current treatment.
Does My Ex Moving In With A New Partner End Maintenance?
Not on its own. Unmarried cohabitation is not remarriage under C.R.S. 14-10-122(2)(a), and Colorado courts have held it does not by itself suspend, reduce, or terminate maintenance. A common law marriage is a different matter, because remarriage includes common law marriage. Cohabitation can still be relevant evidence of changed financial circumstances in a modification motion.
When Does Maintenance End?
Unless the parties agreed otherwise in writing or the decree expressly says otherwise, maintenance terminates on the earliest of the death of either party, the end of the maintenance term, the recipient's remarriage or entry into a civil union, or a court order terminating maintenance.
SOURCES
Colorado Statutes
- C.R.S. 14-10-114, spousal maintenance, advisory guidelines, legislative declaration, and definitions.
- C.R.S. 14-10-122, modification and termination of provisions for maintenance, support, and property disposition.
- C.R.S. 14-2-309, enforcement, Uniform Premarital and Marital Agreements Act.
Colorado Legislation
- Senate Bill 25-116, adding the abuse factor at C.R.S. 14-10-114(3)(c)(XII.5). Signed May 19, 2025, effective August 6, 2025.
- House Bill 25-1159, amending C.R.S. 14-10-114(8)(c)(IV). Signed May 31, 2025, effective August 6, 2025. The separate child support amendments in the same act at C.R.S. 14-10-115(3), (7), and (8) took effect March 1, 2026.
Colorado Judicial Branch
- Form FCF 425, Spousal/Partner Advisory Maintenance Guidelines Information, El Paso County, revised October 14, 2025.
Colorado Case Law
- Sinn v. Sinn, 696 P.2d 333 (Colo. 1985), holding that section 14-10-122 authorizes modification of awards labeled maintenance in gross even absent an express reservation, and that characterization as maintenance or property division turns on the purpose of the payments.
- In re Marriage of Parsons, 30 P.3d 868 (Colo. App. 2001), holding that a general nonmodification clause is sufficient to overcome the statutory presumption that maintenance terminates on the recipient's remarriage.
- In re Marriage of Cargill and Rollins, 843 P.2d 1335 (Colo. 1993), holding that remarriage includes common law as well as ceremonial marriage.
- In re Marriage of Dwyer, 825 P.2d 1018 (Colo. App. 1991), holding that unmarried cohabitation is not remarriage for purposes of suspending, reducing, or terminating maintenance.
- In re Marriage of Thorstad, 2019 COA 13, 434 P.3d 165, on the rebuttable good faith retirement presumption and the burden shift that follows it.
- In re Marriage of Udis, 780 P.2d 499 (Colo. 1989), on the heavy burden borne by the party seeking modification and the requirement that any limit on the court's power to modify be specific and unequivocal.
- In re Marriage of Swing, 194 P.3d 498 (Colo. App. 2008), on good faith early retirement and voluntary underemployment.
Federal
- Internal Revenue Service Publication 504, Divorced or Separated Individuals, on the alimony treatment enacted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Pub. L. 115-97.
This page describes Colorado law as of August 2026. Statutes, court rules, and case law change. Nothing here is legal advice for your situation.