Colorado’s advisory maintenance guidelines generally apply where the marriage lasted at least three years and the parties’ combined annual adjusted gross income is $240,000 or less. They produce a suggested amount and a suggested term, but they do not create a presumption that maintenance will be awarded at all.
Two qualifications matter from the outset. Colorado law also permits maintenance in certain shorter marriages, so a marriage under three years sits outside the guidelines rather than outside maintenance law. And where combined annual adjusted gross income exceeds $240,000, the advisory guideline amount does not apply, although the court may still consider the advisory guideline term.
Even where the guidelines do apply, they remain advisory. The statute states that they create no presumptive amount or term, and the court retains discretion to set an award that is fair and equitable based on the totality of the circumstances. Colorado firms that handle these cases, among them Johnson Law Group, generally start by working out which side of those thresholds a case falls on before running any numbers.
What the court decides before reaching the formula
Before granting or denying maintenance, the court must make written or oral findings on five things: each party’s gross income, the marital property apportioned to each party, the financial resources of each party, the reasonable financial need established during the marriage, and whether the award would be deductible for federal tax purposes.
There is also a threshold the requesting spouse has to clear. The court may award maintenance only if that spouse lacks sufficient property, including the marital property awarded to them, to provide for their reasonable needs, and is unable to support themselves through appropriate employment. An alternative route exists for a spouse who is the custodian of a child whose condition or circumstances make outside employment inappropriate.
One thing the court does not weigh is fault. The statute requires that an award be made without regard to marital misconduct.
The guideline amount
The formula is short. The guideline amount equals forty percent of the parties’ combined monthly adjusted gross income, minus the lower income party’s monthly adjusted gross income. If the result is negative, the guideline amount is zero.
The structure is worth noticing, because it explains a rule people often quote separately. Adding the guideline amount to the lower earner’s own income produces exactly forty percent of the combined income, so the cap is built into the arithmetic rather than applied afterward.
A second step applies where the award is not deductible for federal income tax purposes by the payer and not taxable income to the recipient. In that situation the statute reduces the figure to eighty percent of the calculated amount where combined monthly adjusted gross income is $10,000 or less, and to seventy-five percent where it is more than $10,000 but not more than $20,000.
Whether a given award is deductible is a federal tax question rather than a state one. Colorado addresses it by requiring the court to make an initial finding on the point, which is what determines whether these reductions apply at all.
Worked through: if one spouse earns $10,000 a month and the other earns $4,000, combined income is $14,000. Forty percent of that is $5,600, less $4,000 leaves $1,600. Assuming the award is not deductible and not taxable, the seventy-five percent factor applies at that income level and produces a guideline amount of $1,200 a month.
The guideline term
Duration comes from a table rather than a formula, running from marriages of 36 months to marriages of 240 months. At 36 months the multiplier is 31 percent of the length of the marriage, producing a guideline term of 11 months. The multiplier rises steadily, reaching 50 percent at 150 months and holding there through the top of the table.
So a ten-year marriage, 120 months, carries a multiplier of 45 percent and a guideline term of 54 months. A twenty-year marriage produces a guideline term of 120 months.
Past twenty years the table stops. The court may award maintenance for a specified term of years or for an indefinite term, but it cannot set a term shorter than the guideline term for a twenty-year marriage without making specific findings supporting the reduction.
Short marriages sit outside the guidelines but not outside the statute. For marriages of less than three years, the court may still award maintenance where the distribution of marital property is insufficient to achieve an equitable result, and it may look to the guidelines and factors in doing so.
Above the income ceiling
Where combined annual adjusted gross income exceeds $240,000, the calculation methodology for the amount does not apply. The court cannot extend the formula upward to fit a larger income; it must determine the amount by applying the statutory factors instead. This is the single most consequential boundary in the statute for higher earners.
Duration is treated differently. The statute allows the court to consider the advisory guideline term even in these cases, so higher-income families lose the anchor for the amount while keeping a reference point for the length of the award.
Why the guideline number is only a starting point
The statute lists a long set of factors bearing on both amount and term. They include each party’s financial resources and ability to meet their own needs, the lifestyle during the marriage, the distribution of marital property, both parties’ employment and employability, the duration of the marriage, the age and health of the parties, and significant contributions one spouse made to the other’s education or career.
Two additions are worth flagging. One factor asks whether a party historically earned more or less than their income at the time of permanent orders, including the consistency of overtime or secondary employment. Another, added in 2025, asks whether a spouse engaged in domestic violence, coercive control, economic abuse, litigation abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, or unlawful sexual behavior against the other spouse.
The court also has structural alternatives. It may award additional marital property or otherwise adjust the property division to reduce or eliminate the need for maintenance, and it may reserve jurisdiction to revisit maintenance later if it identifies a specific future event and a reasonably specific window.
Temporary maintenance works differently
While a case is pending, either party may request temporary maintenance, and the court applies the relevant provisions of the same framework to set an amount. The guideline term does not apply to temporary orders; the court sets that period itself.
A temporary award also does not lock anything in. The statute states that a determination of temporary maintenance does not prejudice the rights of either party at permanent orders.
The income definitions do a lot of the work
Adjusted gross income is not take-home pay. It is gross income, reduced by preexisting court-ordered child support actually paid and preexisting court-ordered maintenance actually paid, with a statutory adjustment where the maintenance paid is not deductible, and reduced further by the adjustment for children outside the marriage whom a party is legally responsible to support.
Where a party is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, maintenance is calculated on potential income rather than actual earnings. The statute carves out exceptions for a party who is physically or mentally incapacitated, a party caring for a child under twenty-four months for whom the parties owe a joint legal responsibility, and an incarcerated parent sentenced to one hundred eighty days or more.
Because the entire calculation rests on these two figures, disputes over income are usually the real fight rather than disputes over the formula. Colorado courts require a maintenance advisement in dissolution cases, and the judicial branch publishes the official advisement form parties complete.
Anyone whose case sits near one of the statutory edges, just under or over three years, near the $240,000 ceiling, or with income that is variable or self-employed, is deciding more than a math question. A conversation about where your case actually falls is usually more productive than running a calculator that assumes the guidelines apply.