The standard in the statute.
A decree’s maintenance provisions may be modified only as to installments accruing after the motion for modification, and only on a showing of changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unfair (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(1)(a)). Two ideas do the work. “Substantial and continuing” keeps ordinary fluctuations out of court. “Installments accruing after the motion” makes the filing date the most important date in the case.
The court that hears the motion is looking at the same things it looked at when it set the number: the recipient’s need and ability to be self-supporting, the payor’s ability to pay, and the balance between them. A change on either side can support a motion. A change the payor engineered usually cannot, because the potential-income rule lets the court count what a voluntarily unemployed or underemployed party could earn (C.R.S. § 14-10-114(8)(c)(IV)).
Termination events, and how agreements change them.
Unless otherwise agreed in writing or expressly provided in the decree, the obligation to pay future maintenance ends on the death of either party or on the remarriage of, or the establishment of a civil union by, the party receiving maintenance (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(2)(a)). Cohabitation is not on that list, and the Court of Appeals has held that living with a new partner is not remarriage (In re Marriage of Dwyer, 825 P.2d 1018 (Colo. App. 1991)). Agreements can add to the list, for example a cohabitation clause, or subtract from it, for example maintenance that survives remarriage as part of a property trade. Colorado enforces those choices because a decree may preclude or limit modification of its terms when the separation agreement so provides (C.R.S. § 14-10-112(6)).
Three situations I see.
Illustrations, not case results. Every case turns on its own facts and on the words of its own order.
The engagement that never becomes a wedding. An ex has lived with a partner for three years; the partner pays the mortgage on a house titled in the partner’s name. There is no remarriage and no cohabitation clause. The case is a modification built on need: the recipient’s housing cost is now zero, and the order was set when it was $3,400 a month.
The surgeon who cut back. A payor ordered on $900,000 a year moves to a three-day schedule at 62. The change is voluntary and below full retirement age, so the burden is his. The record is medical, the practice’s call schedule, and a vocational picture of what a surgeon his age can sustain. The motion asks for a step-down that tracks the reduced schedule, not a termination.
The contractual number. A separation agreement says maintenance of $6,000 a month for eight years is contractual and non-modifiable, and says nothing about remarriage. The ex remarries in year three. The amount was locked, but the agreement did not displace the statute’s termination on remarriage, and the motion is to confirm termination, not to modify.
Suspension, step-downs and agreed modifications.
A motion does not have to ask for zero. A temporary suspension during unemployment, a step-down that tracks a retirement schedule, a shorter remaining term in exchange for a lump sum, or a base-plus-percentage structure for variable income can each fit the facts better than an all-or-nothing hearing. Most of the modifications I handle end in a signed stipulation, because a payor with a documented change and a reasonable proposal is hard to say no to, and a hearing costs both sides more than the difference.
