Divorce and custody counsel for Broomfield.

What a Broomfield divorce is usually about.

Equity compensation is the Broomfield problem. Restricted stock units and options from a technology or aerospace employer on the corridor, granted before the marriage and vesting after it, a signing bonus with a clawback, an employee stock purchase plan: Colorado treats the marital portion as marital even when it cannot be sold yet, and the division depends on a formula that turns on when each grant was made and why. Alongside it sit two retirement accounts, a 529 plan for each child, and a house bought at the right time. Retirement money is divided with a qualified domestic relations order, drafted correctly, or the tax bill lands on the wrong spouse. I have written about the compensation piece on Executive Compensation.

Maintenance is the other question. When one spouse out-earns the other by a wide margin, Colorado’s advisory maintenance guideline gives a starting point that is neither a floor nor a ceiling, and the argument is about income: bonus, stock, and what the spouse who stepped back for the children can earn now. The first weeks decide the shape of the next year. More on Spousal Maintenance and Temporary Orders.

Broomfield’s own courthouse, on DesCombes Drive.

Broomfield has been its own city and county since 2001, and its cases are heard at the Broomfield Combined Courts in the Police and Courts Building on DesCombes Drive, a few minutes from anywhere in the city and about forty from my office in Greenwood Village. The court belongs to the 17th Judicial District, which Broomfield shares with Adams County; most of the district’s judges sit in Brighton, and Broomfield’s docket is heard by two district judges and a magistrate assigned here, with the initial status conference run by a facilitator over Webex. The 17th is the one metro district with a published domestic case-management order, and it front-loads the work: the mediation certificate is due 49 days before the permanent-orders hearing, exhibits are marked and exchanged 10 days out, and the joint trial management certificate is filed 7 days out. Every party with minor children completes a court-approved parenting class, and the clerk’s window closes for lunch. The detail, and every other metro courthouse, is on the Denver Metro Family Courts page.

Custody across two school districts and a county line.

Broomfield is split between the Boulder Valley and Adams 12 school districts, and a parent who moves from Anthem to Louisville has crossed a county line. Colorado’s best-interests factors include the physical proximity of the parents’ homes and each parent’s past pattern of involvement, and I build parenting plans around both, with the school, the drive and the exchange point written in, because the plan that is vague about Sunday night is the plan that ends up back in court. More on Parenting-Time Schedules and Parental Responsibilities.

Related: Executive Compensation  ·  Spousal Maintenance  ·  Real Estate Division  ·  Child Support  ·  Parental Responsibilities
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