It’s important to partner with a Denver gray divorce attorney you can trust to protect your rights during a gray divorce in Denver. Choose us and experience the Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. difference.
Separating from your spouse is a difficult and emotional process at any age. If the spouses are over the age of 50, however, the consequences can be even more significant. In this so-called “gray divorce,” the couple may encounter unique issues such as how to divide retirement savings and identify pre-marital assets.
Clients in Denver have trusted Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. with their divorce, legal separation and other family law cases for many years. We’re the preferred law firm in Denver for divorce over the age of 50. Our Denver gray divorce lawyers can help you prepare for and tackle the unique challenges that you will face in a gray divorce with tailored legal services.
We can help you protect your hard-earned assets and retirement benefits, for example, or make a compelling claim for alimony based on your circumstances. No matter what your goals are for your divorce and future, we will work hard to achieve them. We will use the full power of our personnel, legal resources, connections to experts and 100 years of combined legal experience to your benefit.
Most couples pursuing a gray divorce have a lot on the line. You should never try to go it alone through the complex divorce process. Your attorney from Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. will represent your best interests by doing the following through each step of the process for divorce in Colorado:
The stakes are often high in a gray divorce when couples have spent years accumulating assets and raising a family together. When it’s time to part, your gray divorce attorney from Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. can help pave the way as you begin your new journey.
With the amount you have at stake in a senior divorce, you need experienced representation through every step of the Colorado divorce process.
Divorce attorneys in Denver charge an initial consultation fee for the first meeting to learn the scope of your divorce case and what’s involved in your unique circumstances. After your consultation, you’ll pay a retainer.
Most divorce attorneys in Colorado charge between $2,500 and $4,000 for a retainer and then charge an amount per hour of up to $400. The total amount you’ll pay for your gray divorce in Colorado depends on the complexity of your case.
By attending mediation, you and your spouse can save on divorce costs by agreeing to an out-of-court divorce agreement rather than litigating contentious matters before the court for a judge to decide. Courtroom divorce battles take more time and can become costly, but your gray divorce lawyer from Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. is more than ready to assertively argue for your desired outcomes in court if you’re unable to reach an equitable agreement with your spouse.
Colorado divorce law does not require grounds for divorce other than a simple statement that your marriage is “irretrievably broken.” If you’ve decided that it’s time to part ways with your spouse and that divorce is the inevitable end of your marriage journey, contact a gray divorce lawyer in Denver today.
There may be slight advantages to being the first to file—the petitioner, including filing requests for temporary support and choosing the jurisdiction. Filing first also gives you time to make living arrangements and open new bank accounts in your name only. The petitioner in a divorce presents their case first in court.
If you aren’t the petitioner, but you know your spouse is filing for divorce, or you’ve already been served with divorce papers from your spouse, it’s time to hire a Denver gray divorce lawyer to help review the petition and form a response that protects your best interests within the state’s 21-day time limit for respondents.
In some cases, both divorcing spouses file together as co-petitioners which can expedite the divorce process. There are no strong advantages or disadvantages to being a petitioner or respondent in a gray divorce, but having an attorney on your side from the beginning is the key to navigating the process as smoothly as possible.
When younger spouses divorce, the most contentious and emotionally fraught aspects of divorce stems from issues of child custody, shared parenting time, child support, and spousal support. In gray divorces, there are rarely issues of child custody. Instead, the common contentious matters in senior divorces are the division of assets, including retirement accounts, savings, and real estate property as well as inheritance, social security, and spousal support.
In most divorces, an inheritance left to one spouse remains their separate property. Over time, however, an individual inheritance may become marital property. For instance, if you inherited a home but your spouse lived in the house for many years, maintained it, and put time and effort into making improvements, the spouse has a valid claim on that asset. Monetary inheritances may also commingle and become marital property if one spouse grants access to an account to the other spouse.
In blended families, matters of child inheritance also become an issue to resolve in the divorce agreement. A share of assets that you intended to leave to your child could go to your spouse if you commingled assets during your marriage.
Finally, in matters of inheritance during a gray divorce, it’s important to rewrite a will that names a spouse as a beneficiary. Colorado automatically nullifies a will with an ex-spouse listed as a beneficiary, meaning if it isn’t promptly updated, your estate will default to your contingency beneficiary. Divorcing spouses should also remove their spouse’s name from life insurance policies, power of attorney, and as executors of each other’s estates. Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. is a team of full-service lawyers. Your attorney can assist you with these important changes.
Spousal support, also referred to as alimony, is granted in many Colorado divorce cases where a couple has been married for over 10 years. It is an amount that the higher-earning spouse has to pay the lower earner to maintain the standard of living the recipient had during the marriage. If one spouse has not worked outside of the home for most of the marriage, that person is likely to receive long-term spousal support.
If one spouse supported the other’s earlier career advancement by maintaining the home and raising the children, they may have given up their own career opportunities, meaning one spouse owes part of their success to the other’s sacrifice. As part of ending the marriage contract, the higher-earning spouse owes an amount of support to the spouse who gave up their own career opportunities. In senior divorces, it’s not uncommon for a judge to order spousal support from one party to the other for the remainder of their lives since it’s less likely that an aging spouse can enter the workforce and become self-sufficient.
Social Security benefits cannot be divided in a divorce case under Colorado law. However, they can be considered property for the purposes of dividing marital assets equitably. They can also be considered as an economic circumstance for one or both parties for alimony reasons.
A lower-earning spouse can sometimes choose to collect a higher-earning spouse’s social security benefits rather than their own which could impact spousal support and their share of assets during the equitable distribution process. A Denver gray divorce lawyer can help you decide the best way to move forward during mediation and negotiations to work toward the best possible outcome in a divorce agreement.
Some of the largest assets in gray divorces are retirement accounts and savings. These could include the following and more:
Divorcing senior spouses could equitably divide these retirement accounts or one spouse could take the majority of the retirement savings while the other takes assets of equal value. There are several ways to transfer retirement funds during a divorce without paying penalties or taxes for early distribution. A Denver divorce lawyer with years of experience navigating senior divorces can help you find the best way to handle your retirement accounts during the divorce.
Burial plots are rarely an asset to consider in divorces between young spouses, but many older divorcing couples have pre-purchased burial plots as part of their portfolios. In most cases, divorcing seniors no longer wish to go to their final resting places side by side, so they may wish to sell their plots and divide that amount as part of their assets.
Overall, a gray divorce tends to involve larger assets compared to a divorce between younger spouses due to decades of accumulation. This not only makes dividing marital assets more challenging, but it also puts a lot more on the line.
Divorces are emotionally charged situations, when you add the division of large assets to the mix a divorce may become particularly contentious.
Many older divorcing spouses feel that divorce is something they should have done years ago, but perhaps they waited for their children to grow up and become self-sufficient. In other cases, older spouses realize they no longer have much in common when their children have grown, and they begin spending more time together after retirement. Or perhaps the extra time allowed spouses to face issues that they buried during their child-raising years.
Whatever the reason for your senior divorce, you deserve to walk away with dignity. A compassionate senior divorce attorney from Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. can help with all the challenges in a Colorado divorce.
You are facing a complicated legal process ahead as someone getting divorced over the age of 50. While you may not have to deal with issues that younger couples have, such as child custody or child support, you can encounter other challenges. I
n addition to common issues, you and your spouse may need to deal with complicated marital estates, multiple beneficiaries (sometimes from other marriages), a qualified domestic relations order to divide retirement assets, postnuptial or prenuptial agreements, an estate plan, wills, inheritances, and more.
In Colorado, any income, earnings, or assets acquired in the course of marriage are considered marital property. These properties can be divided by a judge if a divorce case goes to trial. Colorado uses an equitable distribution rule, meaning marital assets are divided fairly but not necessarily equally.
Experiencing a divorce at any age isn’t easy, but you need a Denver gray divorce attorney with experience in navigating the unique challenges that come with a late-in-life divorce, especially after a long-term marriage with many assets.
At Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C., our attorneys have decades of experience navigating Colorado’s divorce laws with real results, including through the complexities of divorce after many years of marriage.
If you are involved in a gray divorce in Denver, Colorado or the surrounding area, the attorneys at Ciancio Ciancio Brown, P.C. can help you move forward. Please call (303) 451-0300 or contact us online to schedule a consultation with one of our divorce lawyers. We can help you get through any legal dispute, including a challenging divorce case.
