Colorado Alimony Support Requirements: How it Works and What You Need to Know
Maintenance, previously known as alimony in Colorado, is a type of support payment made from a higher-earning spouse to a lower-earning spouse. The aim of maintenance is to ensure the lower-earning spouse can live and meet his or her basic needs during the divorce and sometimes afterward.
In Colorado, neither spouse is automatically entitled to maintenance. Unless both spouses agree on this type of support and the amount, the court will decide whether it applies and how much it will be according to the case's facts and Colorado law, which provides a formula for its calculation.
Maintenance Types in Colorado
Several types of maintenance are recognized in Colorado, including temporary, rehabilitative, reimbursement, and permanent maintenance.
Temporary support usually only lasts for the duration of the divorce case. It is meant to help a lower-earning spouse who may struggle with the sudden loss of the higher-earning spouse's income during the divorce. On the other hand, rehabilitative support usually goes on for a period of time after the divorce is finalized. This type of support gives the spouse who earns less money some time to develop new job skills or complete his or her education or career training to get into the workforce and find a job to support themselves.
Reimbursement support comes into play when one spouse paid for the other spouse's education or training during the marriage. Since the spouse who paid will not receive any benefits from their investment into the other spouse's education after the divorce, maintenance payments may be used to reimburse the paying spouse for those education or training costs.
Permanent support is less common in Colorado, and usually, it is only used in cases where one spouse will never be able to support him or her self due to illness, disability, age, or other reasons. Permanent support can continue indefinitely after the divorce, but the court will typically set an end date.
Maintenance Eligibility and Amounts in Colorado Divorce Cases
The court's primary concerns in awarding support are that it is equitable and fair to both spouses, the spouse requesting can show a real need for the money, and the paying spouse can afford it.
Courts in Colorado will only award maintenance if a marriage lasted three years or longer. The court also weighs other factors when determining if maintenance is appropriate, including:
The financial resources of each spouse
The ability of the paying spouse to meet his or her own needs and those of his or her spouse
The marriage lifestyle
The distribution of property in the divorce
The employment, income, and employability of each spouse
The length of the marriage
The size and duration of temporary support, if any
The age and health of each party
The contributions of each spouse to their respective job, education, or economic advancements
In addition to the factors above, the court can consider anything else that it deems relevant to the case.
Once the court decides that maintenance is appropriate in a case, the judge has to set its amount and duration. In Colorado, there is a statutory formula for judges to follow. Under that formula, the monthly maintenance payment is 40 percent of the income belonging to the higher-earning spouse minus half of the lower-earning spouse's income, so long as the monthly maintenance award does not exceed 40 percent of the combined gross monthly income. The court will also consider whether either spouse pays or receives maintenance related to a previous spouse or child support.
If, for example, the higher-earning spouse makes $20,000 each month and the lower-earning spouse makes $4,000 a month, and neither pays or receives support from another marriage, the maintenance award would be $6,000 (40 percent of $20,000 is $8,000; you then subtract $2,000, or 50 percent of the lower-earning spouse's income, from this to reach $6,000).
Either spouse in the divorce can ask the court to deviate from the formula on the grounds that following it would be unfair. In this case, the judge has to specify why he or she is not following the formula. Maintenance can also be waived if both spouses agree, and if waived, it can never be requested again. The court can reject a waiver agreement if a judge finds the agreement to be unfair.
Spousal support will have a real impact on your finances, whether you are paying or receiving it. Therefore, it is essential to understand how this support payment could apply to your divorce case.