Unpaid maintenance in Colorado: a judgment on the day it is due.

A judgment on the day it is due.

The statute that makes child support self-executing covers maintenance in the same sentence.

The rule, and what follows from it.

Unpaid maintenance is a final judgment on its due date. It cannot be modified retroactively, and the recipient can enforce it without asking the court first.

In any case in which “child support, maintenance when combined with child support, or maintenance is ordered, a payment becomes a final money judgment” when it is due and not paid, and it may be enforced as other judgments without further action by the court (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(1)(c)). The judgment is entitled to full faith and credit in every state. To use it for a lien or a garnishment, the recipient files a verified entry of support judgment in the existing case, the same form used for child support (JDF 1813), stating the period and the total; there is no filing fee, and the filing revives the installments it covers. The steps are on the Child Support Arrears page.

No retroactive change. Maintenance may be modified only as to installments accruing after a motion to modify is filed, and only on changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unfair (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(1)(a)); in no instance before the filing date (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(1)(d)). The Court of Appeals has held that a court may not abate maintenance that has already accrued. Some decrees go further: a separation agreement can limit or preclude modification of maintenance (C.R.S. § 14-10-112(6)), and then even a motion may not change it.

Temporary maintenance too. Orders entered while the case was pending are enforced the same way. The Supreme Court’s decision in In re Marriage of Nussbeck, 974 P.2d 493 (Colo. 1999) arose from unpaid temporary maintenance and child support, and it held that entering a judgment for the arrears does not take contempt off the table.

Twenty years, and why not to wait.

For child support, the twenty-year limit is close to the whole story. For maintenance it is not.

Each maintenance installment can be enforced for twenty years from its due date, and a verified entry filed within that time revives it (C.R.S. § 13-52-102(2)(a)). The Supreme Court held long ago that alimony and support installments are judgments enforceable for the entire period of the statute of limitations. For child support, laches cannot bar the principal, because the money belongs to the child. Maintenance belongs to the former spouse, and that difference matters.

In In re Marriage of Kann, 2017 COA 94 a former wife waited twenty-six years to enforce maintenance. The Court of Appeals held that laches can bar maintenance interest, because “only the recipient spouse benefits” from it. It then held that laches can bar the principal of maintenance arrears too: the policy that protects child support does not apply to spousal maintenance, and the twenty-year statute “does not preclude maintenance arrearages from mounting to exorbitant levels.” Laches still requires the payor to prove that the recipient knew the facts, delayed unreasonably, and that the payor relied on the delay to his or her prejudice. The lesson is plain. A recipient who lets arrears build for years, without a demand, a verified entry or a motion, is building the other side’s defense.

For maintenance, time is not neutral. The Court of Appeals has held that delay can cost the recipient the principal, not only the interest.

Interest: which statute, what rate.

Unpaid maintenance earns interest, but not under the statute that sets the child support rate.

Not the child support statute. The ten-percent rate in C.R.S. § 14-14-106 belongs to the Child Support Enforcement Procedures Act, and its 2021 text speaks of “child support arrearages.” When the legislature described interest in the notice for a statutory support lien, it named two statutes, interest “pursuant to sections 14-14-106 and 5-12-101” (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(1.5)(f)), which reads most naturally as one rate for child support and the general rate for everything else.

Eight percent, compounded annually. Each unpaid maintenance installment is a judgment on its due date, and Colorado’s judgment-interest statute allows interest on a judgment, where no other rate is specified, at eight percent a year compounded annually (C.R.S. § 5-12-102(4)); the general legal rate is the same (C.R.S. § 5-12-101). The Judicial Branch’s instructions, its self-help page and its legal help center all apply eight percent to maintenance. No published appellate decision I have found decides the rate. One question is open: whether maintenance that came due before July 1, 2021 could be argued to carry the old child support rate, because the pre-2021 statute spoke of “any arrearages.” No court has decided it, and I would not build a claim on it.

The good-cause reduction is a child support rule. The 2021 amendment that lets a court disallow interest for good cause is written for child support arrearages. For maintenance, the payor’s defense to interest is laches, as in Kann. The recipient may always waive it.

$2,500 a month unpaid through 2024, worked to the end of 2026.

The income assignment, the Registry, garnishment and liens.

Most of the machinery that collects child support collects maintenance. The county’s administrative tools mostly do not.

The same machinery, with three differences.

Priority, the county, and retirement income. Each changes how a maintenance case is collected.

The income assignment. The statute is titled “Income assignments for child support or maintenance,” and it applies to maintenance whether or not combined with child support: ordered immediately, activated on notice to the employer, open to objection only for a mistake of fact within fourteen days (C.R.S. § 14-14-111.5). The difference is priority. When one paycheck carries several assignments, current child support comes first, then medical support and child support arrears; an assignment for maintenance only comes fourth. A payor with a child support order in a second family may leave little for a maintenance-only assignment.

The Registry. Maintenance runs through the Family Support Registry when the court orders it or when it is paid by income assignment (C.R.S. § 26-13-114(1)(c)), and a payor the court has directed to pay maintenance through the Registry pays a minimal per-transaction processing fee set annually by rule. Its record is the proof of what was paid, though the statute that makes the record prima facie evidence of contempt speaks of child support and maintenance combined with child support, not maintenance alone.

Garnishment and liens. A continuing garnishment reaches each paycheck for maintenance arrears (C.R.S. § 14-14-105(1)), within the support caps: fifty or sixty percent of disposable earnings, fifty-five or sixty-five for arrears more than twelve weeks old. The broader definition of earnings that reaches pensions and workers’ compensation is written for child support judgments, so I do not assume a pension can be garnished for maintenance-only arrears; other routes to retirement money, such as a domestic relations order, are a question for the particular plan. A recorded transcript of the judgment is a lien on Colorado real estate for six years, renewable by revival.

The county, mostly not. The county child support office’s application says it will not enforce spousal maintenance once the current child support order ends, unless the children still live with the recipient, the maintenance was ordered in the same case, and past-due child support remains. A recipient of maintenance alone should expect to enforce it through the court.

The tools, for maintenance.

Contempt for maintenance.

Contempt enforces maintenance as it enforces child support, and the constitution’s bar on imprisonment for debt does not stand in the way.

Not imprisonment for debt. The Colorado Constitution forbids imprisonment for debt. The Supreme Court held more than a century ago that committing a spouse for contempt for refusing to pay a judgment for separate maintenance is not imprisonment for debt, and it later upheld jail for failing to pay alimony and fees: the sanction is for disobeying the court’s order, not for owing money. A judgment for the arrears does not use up contempt; the two remedies are cumulative.

What has to be proved. For remedial contempt: the order, the payor’s knowledge of it, the nonpayment, and a present ability to pay, by a preponderance of the evidence. The payor carries the burden of proving inability, and willfulness is not required. The court must set a purge condition the payor can meet, for unpaid maintenance usually a payment of a stated amount by a stated date. For punitive contempt: a willful refusal proved beyond a reasonable doubt, with the protections of a criminal case. The process, from the verified motion (JDF 1816) to the personal service the Supreme Court now requires, is on the Contempt of Court page.

When contempt fits. Where the payor is salaried, the income assignment collects faster, with no hearing. Contempt fits the payor the assignment cannot reach: the business owner who controls his own pay, the payor who retired early or quit, the payor with assets but no wages, and the payor who has simply stopped. Ability to pay decides it, and bank records, business records and the payor’s own spending are the proof; post-judgment discovery under C.R.C.P. 69 gets them.

When maintenance ends, the arrears do not.

Four events end the obligation to pay future maintenance. None of them erases what was already owed.

Future maintenance, and past-due maintenance.

Death, the end of the term, the recipient’s remarriage or civil union, or an order ends future maintenance, unless the agreement or decree says otherwise. Installments already due remain judgments.

Unless otherwise agreed in writing or expressly provided in the decree, “the obligation to pay future maintenance is terminated upon the earlier of” the death of either party; the end of the term, unless a motion to modify is filed before it expires; the remarriage or civil union of the recipient; or a court order terminating maintenance (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(2)(a)). The word that matters is future. Installments already due are final judgments, and nothing in the termination statute undoes them. That is my reading of the statute’s structure; I have found no Colorado appellate decision that says it in so many words, and none that holds otherwise.

Remarriage. The Supreme Court has held that remarriage includes a common-law marriage, and that annulling the later marriage does not automatically revive maintenance. Whether an agreement keeps maintenance going after remarriage depends on its words, and the Court of Appeals is divided: one division has required an express provision, and a 2025 division held that continuation may be shown expressly or by clear implication.

Death. If the payor dies, the arrears are a claim against the estate, and Colorado’s nonclaim statute bars claims not presented within one year after the death at the latest, or sooner if the estate gives notice to creditors; a recorded lien is preserved (C.R.S. § 15-12-803). If the recipient dies, the recipient’s estate can collect what was owed. A court may require security for maintenance, including life insurance on the payor, weighing age and insurability, cost, the amount and term, and the payor’s other obligations (C.R.S. § 14-10-114(6)).

Retirement and cohabitation are not on the list. A payor who retires at full retirement age gets a rebuttable presumption that the retirement is in good faith (C.R.S. § 14-10-122(2)(b)), but it is a presumption in a modification case: the payor still has to file, and any reduction reaches back no further than the filing date. See Ending or Reducing Maintenance.

What each event does.

Self-help reductions become judgments.

The most common maintenance arrears case is not a payor who stopped. It is a payor who decided to pay less.

Paying less is not modifying.

A payor who cuts the payment without an order creates a judgment for every shortfall, with interest, and no court can erase it later.

The reasons are usually real. The business had a bad year, the payor retired, the former spouse moved in with someone. None of them changes the order until a court does, and the court can reach back only to the date the motion was filed. Every short payment in between is a support judgment the day it is due.

The arithmetic. A payor ordered to pay $4,000 a month pays $2,500 from March 2025 through April 2026 and files a motion in May. Even if the court reduces maintenance to $2,500 from the filing date, the fourteen months before it are judgments: $21,000 in principal, and about $1,630 in interest by September 1, 2026 at eight percent. The recipient can collect all of it by income assignment, garnishment, lien or contempt.

For the payor, the rule is to file the week the change happens and to keep paying the ordered amount while the motion is pending, or as much as possible, with the records that show why. For the recipient, accepting reduced payments for years without objection is how a laches defense is built. A written demand, a verified entry or a motion keeps the record clean.

A payor who pays less on his own has not modified anything. He has created a judgment for the difference, with interest.

Bankruptcy, and what to bring.

Maintenance survives bankruptcy. What it was called in the decree can matter when one side files.

Maintenance survives. A debt to a former spouse “in the nature of alimony, maintenance, or support” is a domestic support obligation “without regard to whether such debt is expressly so designated,” and it is excepted from discharge (11 U.S.C. §§ 101(14A), 523(a)(5)), in chapter 13 as in chapter 7 (11 U.S.C. § 1328(a)(2)). The automatic stay does not stop withholding of income for a domestic support obligation (11 U.S.C. § 362(b)(2)).

Property settlements are different. A debt to a former spouse under a property division, such as an equalization payment, is not dischargeable in chapter 7 (11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(15)), but the chapter 13 discharge does not list that exception, so it can be discharged there. Because the bankruptcy court looks at the substance of an obligation rather than its label, how a payment was structured in the decree can decide which rule applies. That is a drafting question at the settlement table, and it matters years later.

Six things people get wrong.

The maintenance questions that fill my inbox.

Related: Enforcement of Orders  ·  Contempt of Court  ·  Ending or Reducing Maintenance  ·  Spousal Maintenance  ·  Child Support Arrears  ·  Attorney Fees & Costs