Spousal Maintenance

A note before we begin: Everything here is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. For advice about your specific situation, talk to a qualified Colorado family law attorney.

Your Situation

If you're going through a divorce, legal separation, or an invalidity proceeding in Colorado, spousal maintenance — what many people still call alimony — is one of the biggest financial questions on the table. Maintenance is money one spouse pays the other after a split so that a lower-earning spouse can meet their reasonable needs. Whether it's ordered, how much it is, and how long it lasts can shape both households' finances for years.

This matters because maintenance is not automatic, and it's not guaranteed. A court only awards it after making specific findings about both spouses' finances, and it has real discretion in how it decides. The stakes are high either way: if you expect to need support and don't raise it correctly, you can lose the chance to get it. If you may be asked to pay, the amount and term can be substantial, especially after a long marriage.

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The single most important thing to know up front: you must affirmatively request maintenance in your filings, or the court may never consider it on your behalf.

This guide will walk you through what Colorado law requires, how courts tend to handle maintenance in practice, the concrete steps to take, and what research suggests can help you and your family come out steadier on the other side.

What the Law Requires

Colorado law lays out a clear sequence a court must follow before deciding maintenance. When a party requests maintenance, the court must first make written or oral findings on each spouse's gross income, the marital property given to each, each party's financial resources, the reasonable financial need established during the marriage, and whether any award would be tax-deductible for the person paying it.

The court awards maintenance only after finding that the spouse seeking it lacks enough property to meet their reasonable needs and cannot support themselves through appropriate employment — or is caring for a child whose circumstances make outside work inappropriate. In other words, there's a threshold of genuine need that has to be crossed.

The advisory guidelines. When the marriage lasted at least three years and the spouses' combined annual adjusted gross income is under $240,000, the court must make additional findings about the guideline amount and term. For maintenance that is tax-deductible to the payor, the guideline amount is 40% of the combined monthly adjusted gross income minus the lower earner's monthly income; if that's negative, the amount is zero. When maintenance is not deductible to the payor (which is the rule for orders entered after 2018), the guideline amount is reduced — for example, to 75% of the base figure for combined monthly income over $10,000 but not more than $20,000. The guideline term comes from a statutory table tied to the length of the marriage, running from roughly 31% of the months married for short marriages up to a 120-month cap at a 20-year marriage. For marriages over 20 years, the court may order maintenance for a set term or indefinitely, and it cannot set a term shorter than the 20-year guideline term without specific findings supporting that.

Important: these guidelines are advisory, not presumptive. The court is not bound by the formula result, but it must make specific findings supporting whatever amount and term it chooses — or its decision to deny maintenance altogether.

What counts as income. Maintenance is based on "adjusted gross income," which starts with gross income (from essentially any source — wages, commissions, bonuses, dividends, self-employment, and more) and subtracts preexisting court-ordered child support and maintenance you actually pay. Overtime counts only if your employer requires it as a condition of employment. Income from extra jobs that push you beyond full-time or 40 hours is excluded, as are child support you receive and means-tested public benefits. If someone is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, the court can use potential (imputed) income instead — with exceptions for a party who is incapacitated, caring for a joint child under 24 months, or incarcerated for 180 days or more.

Disclosure. If either party is seeking maintenance, full financial disclosure is required — you cannot use the financial disclosure waiver. And if a party doesn't have a lawyer, the court won't approve an agreement that waives maintenance or sets terms outside the guidelines unless that person confirms they're aware of the guidelines. Several Colorado forms require both spouses to certify they've reviewed the maintenance guidelines before signing — even if neither one is asking for maintenance.

Modification and termination. A maintenance award can later be modified or terminated, but only if you prove a change of circumstances so substantial and continuing that the existing order has become unfair — and only as to payments coming due after you file your motion. Written agreements can bar modification. Also note two things the law specifically says are not grounds to modify: the 2017 federal tax law change, and the enactment of the maintenance statute itself for orders entered before January 1, 2014.

What Courts Typically Do

In practice, Colorado judges work through a structured set of 13 statutory factors when deciding maintenance. These include each spouse's financial resources and reasonable needs, the standard of living during the marriage, how the marital property was divided, each party's income and employability (including what they could earn with reasonable diligence and additional training), historical earnings, the length of the marriage, any temporary maintenance already paid, the parties' age and health, significant contributions one spouse made to the other's advancement, whether a nominal award is appropriate, and the tax treatment of the award. Best practice is for the court to make findings on all of them.

Courts assess "reasonable need" against the marital standard of living — not bare subsistence. In appropriate cases that can even include retirement savings. The underlying goal of the guideline formula is roughly a 60/40 split of combined income, reached by applying a multiplier after the 2018 tax change.

A few practical patterns worth knowing:

• Temporary maintenance keeps the bills paid while the case is pending. It serves a different purpose than permanent maintenance, uses no rebuttable presumption, and — importantly — a temporary award does not prejudice either party's rights at the final hearing. The court won't order it unless you ask.
• Nominal awards. If maintenance is denied outright, future modification is foreclosed. So when a specific foreseeable event could change things later (say, a pending disability application), courts sometimes order a small nominal amount to preserve the ability to revisit maintenance down the road. A court can also formally reserve jurisdiction by making specific findings.
• The modification burden is heavy. The party seeking to change maintenance carries a demanding burden to prove a substantial and continuing change. Courts are actually split on whether a recipient earning more than expected justifies modification — it depends on the facts.

The honest bottom line: outcomes range widely. Two couples with similar numbers can get different results depending on marriage length, health, contributions, and how well each side presents its financial evidence.

Step by Step: What to Do

1. Decide early whether maintenance is on your table. Whether you're the one who may need support or the one who may pay, identify this before you file or respond. If you're the one asking, you need to raise it affirmatively — the court generally won't consider maintenance for you unless you request it.

2. Request maintenance in your opening papers. The petition (or, if you're responding, your response) needs to include a request for spousal support. The guided wizard on this site will prepare and pre-fill the correct paperwork so this request is properly included — you won't have to hunt down forms or figure out which box to check.

3. Ask for temporary maintenance if you need support now. You can request temporary spousal support while the case is pending to keep living expenses and bills covered. Because a temporary award doesn't prejudice your rights at the final hearing, there's little downside to asking if you genuinely need it. The guided wizard can prepare this request too.

4. Complete full financial disclosure. If maintenance is in play, you cannot use the disclosure waiver. Gather documentation of all income sources — wages, bonuses, commissions, self-employment income, pension and investment income, and any support you receive from a prior relationship. Your sworn financial statement is the backbone of the court's maintenance findings, so be thorough and accurate.

5. Review the maintenance guidelines. Colorado's forms require both parties to certify they've read the statutory guidelines before signing certain agreements. Read them carefully so you understand what the formula produces for your situation — even though the result is only advisory.

6. Build your evidence for the final hearing. The Permanent Orders hearing is where the court actually sets (or declines to set) maintenance. Come prepared with an updated sworn financial statement, documentation of income and reasonable needs, and, where helpful, witness testimony. Put your position on maintenance in your pretrial statement and support it with concrete financial facts.

7. If you need to secure payment, consider security. The court can require the paying spouse to carry life insurance as security for maintenance in case of death, and it can order payments to run through the Family Support Registry. Raise these if continuity of payment is a concern.

8. If you later need to change the order, act quickly and file. A modification only reaches payments coming due after you file your motion, so delay costs you. You'll need to show a substantial and continuing change that makes the current order unfair.

What Research Shows Can Help

The items available here focus mostly on the law and court practice, and they offer limited formal social-science research on maintenance specifically. What the materials do reflect is a practical pattern worth taking to heart: courts base their decisions on the financial facts they find credible. The parties who fare best are generally the ones who present clear, documented, honest financial information rather than estimates or arguments without backup.

The guidelines are also built around a target of roughly a 60/40 income division after the split — a reminder that the system is aimed at a reasonable balance between households rather than leaving either spouse at bare subsistence or stripping the payor of the ability to meet their own reasonable needs. Framing your expectations around that balance, rather than an all-or-nothing outcome, tends to align better with how Colorado actually approaches maintenance.

What to Do Today

• Start the guided wizard so your request for maintenance (and temporary support, if you need it) is properly included in your filings from the start.
• Begin pulling together your income documentation — recent pay stubs, tax returns, records of bonuses or self-employment income, and any support you receive from a prior order.
• Write down your monthly needs based on the standard of living during your marriage, not just the minimum to get by, so you can speak concretely to "reasonable need."
• Read Colorado's maintenance guidelines so you understand what the formula produces and can certify, honestly, that you've reviewed them.
• If money is tight right now, note that you can request temporary maintenance to keep bills paid while the case is pending — and that doing so won't hurt your position at the final hearing.

Related Issues to Be Aware Of

Employment instability. Because maintenance turns on each spouse's income and employability, a job loss, reduced hours, or a claim that someone is voluntarily underemployed can swing the calculation significantly. If imputed income is at issue, courts look at concrete factors — work history, skills, local job market, and prevailing earnings data — so understanding how employment instability affects income findings will help you prepare your evidence.

Tax implications of divorce. The maintenance formula itself differs depending on whether the award is tax-deductible to the payor, and the court can adjust the amount to allocate the tax burden fairly. Since the 2018 federal tax change reshaped how maintenance is taxed, it's worth understanding the broader tax implications of your divorce before you agree to any numbers.

Cohabitation and remarriage effects. Maintenance terminates automatically by law when the recipient remarries or enters a civil union — unless your decree or agreement expressly says otherwise. Unmarried cohabitation, by contrast, does not automatically end maintenance. If continuation after remarriage matters to you, it must be spelled out clearly; learn more about how cohabitation and remarriage affect maintenance.

How to modify a court order. If your circumstances change down the road, maintenance can be revisited — but only through the modification process, with its heavy burden and its rule that changes reach only payments due after you file. Familiarize yourself with how to modify a court order so you act in time.

Insurance and benefits continuity. The court can order the paying spouse to carry life insurance as security for maintenance in case of death — and during the divorce itself, an automatic order restrains both parties from canceling or letting insurance lapse without notice and consent. If steady payment or coverage is a concern, see insurance and benefits continuity.