Frequently asked questions

A will is sufficient for most people. An adult with grown children, or none, who intends every asset to pass immediately to heirs and has kept beneficiary designations up to date is well served by a will alone. Colorado even recognizes holographic wills, a will written almost entirely in the testator’s own hand. C.R.S. § 15-11-502(2). There are four situations in which a trust is worth the cost. Minor beneficiaries. An outright devise to a minor cannot simply be handed to the child: absent a trust or a custodianship under the Colorado Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, C.R.S. § 11-50-101 et seq., the distribution may require a court-supervised conservatorship, C.R.S. § 15-14-401 et seq., which is expensive to establish and continuing in its supervision. Colorado’s general statutes, moreover, treat minority as extending to twenty-one for many purposes, C.R.S. § 2-4-401(6), and a custodianship may run to that age. Anyone leaving assets to a beneficiary who might be under twenty-one should consider a trust. Control over timing. A will distributes property at once. A trust can distribute it on terms: at a stated age, upon the occurrence of an event, in installments, or at the discretion of a trustee. Where the instrument also restrains a beneficiary from assigning their interest and places it beyond the reach of their creditors, it is a spendthrift trust. C.R.S. § 15-5-502. Estate tax. A will alone does not address tax planning. If your estate is large enough to face federal estate tax, a trust becomes an important planning tool. Colorado itself imposes no estate or inheritance tax; the analysis is federal. Probate avoidance. A will and trust together generally cost less than administering an estate without them. The simplest probate begins around $3,000 and rises from there: the petition, filing fees, publication fees. Notice of a death must run in a newspaper even when a will exists. C.R.S. § 15-12-801(1). Creditor claims must be answered, from old credit cards to invoices from assisted living. Distributions must be carefully calculated and the probate case closed. A trust can move assets without a case being opened at all. A trust does not guarantee that probate is avoided. A single oversight, such as failing to name the trust as beneficiary of a life insurance policy, can require administration regardless. This is worth confirming before you rely on it.

Our estate planning packages are billed at a flat rate, published above. Tax planning trusts, special needs trusts, and other complex instruments are billed hourly.

It is often said that the state decides who receives your property. That is not quite what happens. Colorado sets a statutory order of intestate succession, C.R.S. §§ 15-11-102 and 15-11-103, and it is more particular than most people expect. A surviving spouse does not automatically take everything. That result follows only where the decedent leaves no descendants and no surviving parent, or where every surviving descendant is a descendant of both spouses and the surviving spouse has no other surviving descendants. Introduce a child from an earlier relationship, on either side, and the spouse takes a fixed sum plus a fraction of the balance, with the remainder passing to descendants. Where there are no descendants but a parent survives, that parent shares in the estate as well. The fixed sums are adjusted for inflation each year. C.R.S. § 15-10-112. Where there is no spouse to receive the estate, the estate descends in a set order: to descendants first, then to parents, then to the descendants of parents, then to grandparents and their descendants. In such situations, inheritance is rarely the source of the dispute. The difficulty is that the court must appoint one person to make every decision. Sell the family house, or keep it? Sell the jewelry, divide it evenly, or give it to the one granddaughter? A single personal representative decides, and siblings contest who that will be. These proceedings can be straightforward. They can also become protracted and expensive, and the outcome may bear little resemblance to what the decedent would have chosen. Given how little a will costs to prepare (a holographic will costs nothing), no one should die without one.

An estate plan should be reviewed every time you experience significant life changes: a death in the family, a marriage, a divorce, a birth, or a new beneficiary who does not appear in the existing documents. In the absence of such events, a brief review every five years is recommended. Review is not revision. Most plans do not need rewriting on a five-year cycle, but they do warrant the conversation. The conversation about whether an update is needed is complimentary to our clients, whenever we prepared the plan.

Not necessarily. An LLC’s operating agreement governs over the will. C.R.S. §§ 7-80-108, 7-80-702. Where the operating agreement is silent, the interest passes under the terms of the will. Where it is not, the agreement controls. We prepare beneficiary-form (TOD) registrations of entity interests under C.R.S. § 15-15-301 et seq. where that is the cleaner solution.

Retain counsel. Many people are entirely capable of discharging the responsibilities themselves. But at a difficult moment, attending to court deadlines, notices, publications, and creditors tends to displace grieving. An attorney keeps the deadlines, notifies the creditors, and collects the assets efficiently. A personal representative steps into the shoes of a fiduciary. The Colorado Probate Code directs that the estate be settled and distributed expeditiously and efficiently. C.R.S. § 15-12-703. In practice that means serving as investment adviser, banker, and accountant for everything the decedent left behind, assets and debts alike. We are regularly called by personal representatives facing threats, or actual claims, that they erred in the accounting, overlooked assets, distributed unfairly, failed to notify creditors, or left an estate open for years. Counsel is how you comply with the process from beginning to end.

A minimum of six months. C.R.S. § 15-12-1003 (an estate may not be closed by sworn statement earlier than six months after the appointment of the original personal representative). People arriving from other states are often surprised to hear it, having heard of probate running for years. Colorado offers an efficient alternative known as informal probate, C.R.S. § 15-12-301 et seq., which proceeds without direct court supervision unless an interested person asks the court to intervene. Most of the six months is spent waiting rather than working.

Often, no. Effective planning generally avoids it. Where a trust exists and assets are either held in its name or carry a designated beneficiary, there is usually nothing left to administer. Avoiding probate is among the principal reasons we recommend a trust alongside a will. Even without a trust, beneficiary designations can dispose of every asset. Account designations are the simplest. Real estate designations are frequently the most complex. Colorado also provides collection by affidavit for small estates. C.R.S. § 15-12-1201. Where the property subject to disposition consists of personal property alone and its value, net of liens and encumbrances, does not exceed an inflation-indexed ceiling — less than six figures in the mid-2020s — a successor may collect it by sworn affidavit ten days after death, without a probate case being opened.

Colorado law entitles beneficiaries and other interested persons to request a full accounting, both of what the estate holds and of what the personal representative has spent administering it. Those records ordinarily make clear whether the estate is being handled properly.

If you are not receiving them, demand them. If you have demanded them and they have not arrived, you will likely need counsel to obtain them.

Where the records are withheld, or where they disclose waste or mismanagement, you may be entitled to have the personal representative removed.

People do change their estate plans, and it can come as a shock to family members and beneficiaries. Others simply neglect to update them. A will must be valid to be binding, and Colorado law sets requirements for validity. C.R.S. §§ 15-11-501 to 15-11-503. Where the document presented is not a valid will — for want of due execution or testamentary capacity, or by reason of undue influence — the probate must be contested. Contests proceed as formal testacy proceedings, in which the statute allocates the burdens of proof. C.R.S. § 15-12-407.

We do not act for consumers in disputes with companies unless the dispute is likely to affect other people as well. Examples make the line clearest.

If you were sold a car with a failing transmission, that is not a case we take. If you can show you were given a vehicle history report predating the seller’s own purchase of the car, and that other buyers were sold on the same stale report, that is a case we can bring.

If a solar company came to your house and overstated what your panels would produce, we cannot help. If a solar company installed panels across your neighborhood, cannot resolve the failures, and continues to press for payment, that is a consumer claim.

The distinction is the number of people affected by a particular pattern or practice.

We bring these cases against companies: established, substantial, and often publicly traded. We generally do not bring them against individual scammers or thieves, because we want our clients to hold a judgment they can actually collect. A judgment against someone operating a scheme from another country is a matter for the Attorney General or the FBI rather than for private civil litigation.

You have the right to dispute an error on your credit report, and the credit bureau has an obligation to conduct a reasonable reinvestigation. Some disputes are straightforward: a wrong name, a wrong address, a missing debt, a misstated amount. Others are more involved, and the more involved errors are frequently the obligation of the furnisher of the information rather than of the bureau. If you have disputed an error and have good reason to believe the bureau should have corrected or deleted it, call our office and we will review it.

Usually not. We would rather say so than charge you for work you do not need. Residential transactions in Colorado are conducted on standard forms promulgated by the Colorado Real Estate Commission. Those forms were drafted over many years by experienced practitioners, and they allocate the rights and obligations of buyer and seller even-handedly. A licensed broker is trained to complete them and can generally do so without an attorney’s involvement. One point deserves attention. The standard drafting tools distinguish the form language, printed in black, from the input language, entered in blue. Read every word of the blue text carefully. Those entries are usually short, and a licensed broker can generally draft them well. A transaction does occasionally require an attorney, especially where brokers are prohibited from providing guidance: to review and interpret title documents (easement provisions, association documents, title records), to draft non-standard contracts, or to resolve a dispute between the parties. Most parties forego attorney review of title documents as a matter of practice and practicality. An overwhelming majority of transactions can be handled end-to-end by a Colorado licensed broker. If you are considering hiring an attorney to assist in a real estate transaction, paying for a broker and an attorney separately is unnecessarily duplicative. Consider instead a broker who is also a licensed attorney. Many brokers hold both licenses, including Chelsea Thomas, the firm’s senior partner. Licensed brokers are trained to defined levels of competency, but the requirements for a brokerage license — no more than a G.E.D. — are modest beside those of legal licensure.

Under the standard-form Colorado Real Estate Commission contract, real property is sold as is, where is, and with all faults. A buyer takes the house subject to its defects, whether that means components out of code, unfortunate paint, or broken windows. There is one considerable exception. A seller of real property in Colorado must disclose every latent adverse material defect actually known to them.

• A defect is adverse where it affects the value of the property negatively.
• A defect is material where it affects that value substantially.
• A defect is latent where it cannot readily be observed on a basic inspection. Most importantly, the defect must be actually known to the seller, and that is a high burden. It is not enough that the seller should have known. It is not enough that the seller’s contractor knew of the defect and concealed it. (Real estate licensees carry statutory disclosure duties of their own, C.R.S. §§ 12-10-404, 12-10-407, but those run against the broker rather than the seller.) Such evidence is difficult to find. Proof of a seller’s knowledge ordinarily takes the form of evidence that they attempted to hide the condition: a patched foundation crack, a basement newly drywalled, mold painted over. These cases are hard to prove and are frequently litigated in Colorado. If you believe you have been affected by a failure to disclose, our attorneys can assist, and you are welcome to schedule a consultation.

Often, yes. Associations hold considerable authority in Colorado to determine how owners may use their property, and courts extend them latitude under what is known as the business judgment rule.

The legislature has carved out a growing list of exceptions, however. An association generally may not prohibit, and in most cases may only reasonably regulate, matters including but not limited to:

• Patriotic, political, and religious expression, including flags and signs
• Renewable energy generation devices, such as rooftop solar
• Electric vehicle charging equipment
• Drought prevention measures. An association cannot require turf grass or forbid xeriscaping
• Fire prevention measures and fire-hardened building materials
• Family child care homes
• Accessory dwelling units, where the restriction predates the relevant statute
• Certain affordable housing arrangements

The list grows almost every legislative session, so an association telling you that something is forbidden is not the end of the inquiry. An association may still impose reasonable rules on the number, size, and placement of these things. What it generally cannot do is forbid them outright.

Outside those categories, discretion is broad. We hear regularly from owners whose neighbors were permitted to do something, and who were then told their own identical conduct violates the covenants. Sometimes the other violators sit on the board. Even then, courts apply the business judgment rule, which grants enough latitude to permit that kind of uneven enforcement.

A great many association disputes are, in the end, political. Whoever can assemble enough votes to control the board controls the decisions.

This is more common than most owners expect, and the documents disagree for ordinary reasons rather than sinister ones. A recorded plat shows how a subdivision was laid out. A survey shows what a surveyor found on the ground on a particular day. A legal description in a deed may have been written long before either, sometimes by reference to monuments that no longer exist. A fence, meanwhile, records where somebody once decided to put a fence. Where these disagree, the question is which of them controls and what has happened on the ground since. Long-standing occupation, an agreement between former owners, or an improvement built in reliance on the wrong line can all affect the answer. Begin by collecting the documents: your deed, the recorded plat, any survey, and your title commitment or policy. Bring them to a consultation. Most of these matters resolve through a boundary agreement recorded between the neighbors, see C.R.S. § 38-44-112, which is far cheaper than litigating where the line is.

Start with written notice, and keep proof that you sent it. Colorado’s warranty of habitability applies to residential leases by statute. C.R.S. § 38-12-503. A landlord cannot waive it or disclaim it in the lease. C.R.S. § 38-12-508. Once a tenant gives notice of a qualifying condition, the landlord must begin remedial action within twenty-four hours where the condition materially interferes with life, health, or safety, and within seventy-two hours for any other condition the statute covers. C.R.S. § 38-12-503(2)(b), (4). Two practical points carry most of the weight. Send the notice the way your landlord normally communicates with you, and retain sufficient proof that it was delivered. A habitability claim frequently turns on whether notice can be proven, rather than on whether the condition existed. What follows from a landlord’s failure to act is more involved, and the remedies available to a tenant have changed materially in recent years. C.R.S. § 38-12-507. When you are looking at these rights and requirements, make sure you are relying on the most recent version of the statutes. Your rights and the landlord’s obligations depend heavily on the facts.

To a tenants’ rights organization, in most cases, and we will tell you so rather than quote you a fee. Colorado has a network of non-profit and legal aid organizations that represent tenants at no cost or on a sliding scale. For the great majority of residential tenancy matters they are better placed to help than we are. They know the local courts, they carry the volume, and they do not charge.

• Community Economic Defense Project is where we send people first. The most experienced tenants’ rights attorneys in the state work here. They combine legal representation with rental assistance and navigation, which is often what a tenancy matter actually needs.
• Colorado Legal Services is the statewide civil legal aid provider.
• Colorado Poverty Law Project runs eviction legal defense. We continue to take selected tenant matters, particularly where a habitability failure has caused significant harm or where a statute shifts fees to the landlord. If your situation is one of those, tell us. If it is not, we would rather point you somewhere useful than take your money.

Attorneys use the term judgment proof to describe a person or company from whom a judgment would be difficult, if not impossible, to collect. The pattern is familiar. An individual forms a company, but no bank account is ever opened, no meeting held, no money invested; the name exists solely so that its owner is not held liable under the contract. When something goes wrong, that company quietly stops operating, and a new LLC appears and begins issuing contracts in its place. Or the debtor is an individual whose income is too small or too irregular to garnish, and who owns no real property against which a judgment lien could attach. A judgment against a judgment-proof debtor is worth the paper it is written on. Before suing under a contract, consider whether the counterparty could satisfy the judgment at all — and where assets have been moved rather than spent, whether the Colorado Voidable Transactions Act supplies the remedy. (Question 3.) The other considerations that determine whether suit is worthwhile — chiefly what you can prove, and how expenses can be kept down — are fact dependent. On expense, Colorado’s courts are structured to keep costs proportionate to the amount in dispute. Claims of $7,500 or less may be brought in the small claims division of county court, C.R.S. § 13-6-403, where a plaintiff may not appear through an attorney unless the defendant does, C.R.S. § 13-6-407. That alone keeps costs down substantially. Claims of $25,000 or less may be brought in county court, which carries none of the extensive motions practice or discovery expense of district court. And even in district court, an action in which no party seeks more than $100,000 proceeds under a simplified procedure that limits discovery and its attendant cost. C.R.C.P. 16.1. Bring the contract and the number. The review is complimentary.

With a demand letter, in most instances. A properly drafted demand communicates two things: that the relief sought is specific, and that counsel has been retained to obtain it. Both tend to concentrate the attention of the recipient. Where the recipient engages counsel of their own, that attorney will advise them of what they may already suspect, which is that resolution costs materially less than litigation and that the dispute is not likely to be resolved in their favor. Many attorneys will draft a demand letter. Fewer are prepared to file suit on every demand that goes unanswered. We do not issue a demand without the client’s settled intention to enforce it, which is why our demand letters are taken seriously. Where they are not, the litigation follows.

Colorado’s fraudulent transfer statute — enacted in 1991 as the Colorado Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act and, since Senate Bill 25-133 took effect in 2025, renamed and updated as the Colorado Voidable Transactions Act — provides that a transfer made to hinder, delay, or defraud a creditor may be avoided. The statute reaches conveyances from an entity to an owner’s spouse, from an individual to family members, and transfers made for less than reasonably equivalent value while the transferor was insolvent or was rendered so by the transfer. The 2025 amendments matter in practice. Among other changes, the limitation period for insider-preference claims — the transfer by an insolvent debtor to a relative or other insider on account of an antecedent debt — was extended from one year to four years, and the amendments codify the allocation and standard of proof for claims and defenses under the act. Relief may be pursued against the property itself, against the transferee, and against the transferor. Post-judgment enforcement of this kind is frequently the difference between holding a judgment and realizing on one.

Colorado follows the American Rule: absent a contractual or statutory basis, each party bears its own attorney fees. The most common contractual basis is a prevailing party provision. Its operation is symmetrical, and that symmetry warrants consideration before suit is filed. Where liability is genuinely contested, each party carries the risk of a judgment and a fee award besides, which ordinarily counsels settlement. Where liability is clear, the same provision operates as leverage, and the prospect of accruing fees frequently produces an early resolution. A few Colorado and federal statutes shift fees independently of the agreement. Whether one applies is among the first questions we consider.

The governing instrument is the starting point. Whatever rights you hold as a member, partner, or shareholder are defined first by the operating agreement, the partnership agreement, or the bylaws, and a substantial proportion of these disputes are resolved by reading them closely. Owners of closely held entities owe one another duties, and the conduct that brings principals to this firm follows recognizable patterns: exclusion from decisions in which the instrument confers a voice, suspension of distributions while the controlling owner’s compensation increases, and refusal to produce books and records to which a member is entitled under the governing instrument and the inspection provisions of the Colorado corporation and limited liability company acts. A written demand for books and records is ordinarily the appropriate first step. It is inexpensive, and the response is informative whether or not it is complied with. Once trust is broken, most disputes are resolved through a negotiated exit on defined terms. Where negotiation fails, the remedies to be considered may include a claim for breach of fiduciary duty, a derivative action, or a petition for judicial dissolution. If the arrangement was never reduced to writing, disclose that at the outset. It alters the analysis without foreclosing it.

Formation work is billed at a flat rate. Current pricing appears above.