Practice Area · Marital Agreements
Postnuptial agreements in Colorado.
Sometimes the right agreement comes after the wedding: a company about to be sold, an inheritance arriving, an estate plan that needs alignment, a marriage rebuilding after a hard season. Colorado permits marital agreements during the marriage — and examines them closely.
When a Postnup Makes Sense
Life events the wedding-day rules didn't anticipate.
The common triggers in my practice: a business heading toward a sale, where both spouses benefit from defining the proceeds in advance; family wealth arriving by inheritance or trust distribution; blended-family estate planning, where the marital agreement and the estate plan must tell the same story; and reconciliation — couples choosing to stay together who want the financial anxiety taken off the table so the marriage can be about the marriage.
Why the Bar Is Higher
Married people owe each other more.
A postnuptial agreement is signed by spouses who already owe one another financial candor — and courts review these agreements with corresponding care. The same statutory framework governs marital agreements generally — voluntariness, adequate financial disclosure, and meaningful access to independent counsel or a valid written waiver — but because spouses already owe each other financial candor, the margin for process shortcuts is smaller. Which is why I build postnups the same way I build prenups for business owners: valuation-grade disclosure, genuinely separate counsel, no time pressure, and terms a court will recognize as fair rather than extracted. The agreement most likely to survive is the one that was honestly made.
Common Questions
What couples ask — usually quietly.
Is a postnup as strong as a prenup?
Built correctly, yes — but the process discipline matters even more, because courts look harder at agreements between people already married. Full disclosure and independent counsel aren't formalities here; they're the agreement's armor.
We're selling the company next year. Should we do this now?
That's one of the best reasons to. Defining how proceeds will be characterized before the liquidity event — while it's planning rather than positioning — produces agreements that are both fairer and far more durable.
Can a postnup help us stay married?
It often does. Removing the financial unknowns — what happens to the business, the family money, the house — lets some couples stop negotiating through the marriage itself. I've seen these agreements lower the temperature of a household considerably.
The rest of this chapter.
Prenuptial and postnuptial agreements built to hold up — and, in the prenuptial work, drafted alongside the trust and estate-tax planning that protects family money for the long run.
Engagement
The agreement is easier while it's still planning.
A consultation is a scheduled working session — in person in Greenwood Village or by video — in which we go through your situation and I tell you what I would do. It is a paid meeting, not a free call and not a sales pitch; my assistant quotes the consultation fee when you schedule. There is no chatbot here: the contact form and the phone both reach my office, my assistant reviews every inquiry personally, and the meeting goes on my calendar. Please hold the confidential details until we have run a conflicts check.