Practice Area · Marital Agreements
Prenuptial agreements in Colorado.
A prenuptial agreement is not a bet against the marriage. It is a plan two people make together while they still agree — and in Colorado, its strength is decided by the process on the day it's signed, not by the arguments on the day it's tested.
Who Actually Needs One
Not just the wealthy — the complicated.
Business owners whose company will grow during the marriage. Trust beneficiaries whose family wealth predates the relationship. Executives with equity that vests over years. Second marriages with children and estates on both sides. In each of these, the default rules of Colorado divorce law produce outcomes neither spouse would have chosen — a prenup replaces those defaults with terms you both actually agreed to.
My objective in drafting is the one that also makes agreements enforceable: fair, durable, and honest — not one-sided. A prenup that strips one spouse of everything is a prenup a court will be looking for reasons to break.
Colorado's Enforceability Rules
The process is the protection.
Colorado governs marital agreements under the Colorado Marital Agreements Act, C.R.S. § 14-2-301 et seq. The recurring themes in enforceability are voluntariness, adequate financial disclosure, and meaningful access to independent counsel — including specific waiver language where a party proceeds without their own lawyer.
Which produces the principle I build every agreement around: the disclosure schedule is the prenup. Courts test the process that produced the signature — how far before the wedding it was signed, how complete the financial disclosure was, whether both sides had real counsel. For clients with business interests or trust positions, I prepare valuation-grade disclosure, because an agreement protecting a company is only as strong as the honesty of the numbers behind it.
Colorado also draws firm limits: a marital agreement cannot predetermine child support in a way that keeps the court from protecting the child's interests, and maintenance provisions may be reviewed for unconscionability at enforcement. A well-drafted agreement respects those limits instead of pretending they don't exist.
How I Build Them
Coordinated with the rest of your life.
A serious prenup doesn't live alone — it coordinates with your estate plan, your entity structures, and any trust instruments in the picture. My tax background (LL.M., Georgetown) means the agreement anticipates how income, appreciation, and transfers will actually be characterized, not just who keeps the house.
And process matters emotionally, too: I negotiate these agreements firmly but in a way designed not to poison an engagement. Done right, the conversation a prenup forces — full financial honesty before the wedding — is one many couples are quietly glad they had.
Common Questions
What people ask before raising it with their fiancé(e).
When should we start?
Months before the wedding — never wedding week. Timing pressure is one of the first things courts examine when an agreement is challenged. Early also means calmer: it's a planning conversation, not an ultimatum.
Can it protect a business that hasn't grown yet?
Yes — that's one of its most valuable uses. The agreement can define how future appreciation, income, and even a future sale of the company will be characterized, which is precisely what Colorado's default rules handle worst for owners.
Will it actually hold up?
A Colorado prenup built on full disclosure, independent counsel, unhurried timing, and terms a court won't find unconscionable is a strong agreement. The ones that fail are almost always broken by their own process — rushed signings, hidden assets, one-sided terms. That's why I engineer the process as carefully as the terms.
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 best time to plan is while you both still agree.
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.