There is no playing “hide the ball” in a Colorado dissolution of marriage proceeding; each party’s financial lives are effectively open books to the other. Without even waiting for a request, within 42 days of service of a petition for dissolution or a post-decree motion affecting financial matters, each spouse is required to provide a sworn financial statement and accompanying financial disclosures, and as a follow-up, either of them can seek additional discovery.
The Sworn Financial Statement and supporting asset schedules are a comprehensive itemization of the following:
Additionally, when providing the sworn financial statement, each party is required to provide exhaustive financial disclosures. A sample of those disclosures are:
Providing disclosures is mandatory, even if the parties have agreed to everything. And failure to do so will delay the case as the court cannot enter orders without them.
LEARN MORE with the following in-depth discussion of the sworn financial statement and accompanying mandatory financial disclosures.
While spouses may have money secrets during marriage, in the dissolution of marriage process both are required to disclose all assets and debts. In short, that hidden credit card you kept from your spouse must be disclosed, along with that secret “rainy day fund” you’ve been saving.
Divorcing spouses owe each other a special duty: “Family members stand in a special relationship to one another and to the court system.” C.R.C.P. 16.2(a).
The Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure make clear that there can be no “hiding the ball”, or the gamesmanship people may think exists in other types of cases, and a spouse has to disclose relevant information even if the other spouse did not think to ask for it:
“Parties to domestic relations cases owe each other and the court a duty of full and honest disclosure of all facts that materially affect their rights and interests and those of the children involved in the case. The court requires that, in the discharge of this duty, a party must affirmatively disclose all information that is material and relevant to the resolution of the case without awaiting inquiry from the other party.”
C.R.C.P. 16.2(e)(1). (Emphasis added).
The starting point for the mandatory financial disclosures in Colorado is the Sworn Financial Statement, a multi-page form where each party is required to list his/her income, expenses, assets and debts. This statement is both filed with the court, as well as provided to the other party. For the sake of simplicity, references to the Sworn Financial Statement in this article mean both the main questionnaire and the supporting asset schedules.
The Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure provide:
“A party shall, without a formal discovery request, provide… a completed Sworn Financial Statement and (if applicable) Supporting Schedules… within 42 days after service of a petition or a post decree motion involving financial issues.” C.R.C.P. 16.2(e)(2).
The sworn financial statement needs to be provided to the other party (or attorney, if any), and filed with the Court. C.R.C.P. 16.2(e)(6), without waiting for a request.
El Paso County has a standard order for domestic relations cases. FCF 400 Domestic Relations Case Management Order, states that parties should bring their sworn financial statements to the Initial Status Conference (ISC). In reality, if the financial statement is filed prior to the ISC, this obligation is satisfied, and if not filed in advance, the court will invariably give the parties a couple more weeks to comply.
The Colorado Supreme Court has the JDF 1111 Sworn Financial Statement in both PDF and PDF and MS Word versions on its web site. And most cases will also require the JDF 1111SS, Sworn Financial Statement Supporting Asset Schedules (PDF, MS Word). Pro se parties (those who do not have counsel) can use these fill-in-the-blank forms, though most attorneys have a computerized version of them.
At Graham.Law, we use dedicated software - Family Law Software, - to automate the process. It ensures everything is presented exactly as required by the Court, performs the calculations automatically, and makes sure we don’t miss anything. And the software integrates the sworn financial statement with other tools, including an asset-debt spreadsheet, child support worksheet, etc.
When completing the sworn financial statement, a party will need to review his/her underlying financial documents to complete it properly. Those documents, as well as a comprehensive laundry-list of other financial disclosures, have to be provided to the other party.
Unlike the sworn financial statement, these accompanying financial disclosures are NOT filed with the court, just provided to the other party. C.R.C.P. 16.2(e)(6).
Instead, the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure require each party to certify to the Court that the disclosures have been provided to the other party as required:
“A Certificate of Compliance shall accompany the Mandatory Disclosures and shall be filed with the court. A party's signature on the Certificate constitutes certification that to the best of the signer's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after a reasonable inquiry, the Mandatory Disclosure is complete and correct as of the time it is made, except as noted with particularity in the Certificate of Compliance.” C.R.C.P. 16.2(e)(7).
That certificate of compliance is the JDF 1104, Certificate of Compliance with Mandatory Financial Disclosures (PDF, MS Word), and it must be filed with the Court. This form, in essence, says “Judge, even though they are not filed with you, swear that I provided the other party with a copy of the following documents…”
To say “almost everything” would not be an unfair answer to this question. The Rules of Civil Procedure has a Form 35.1 which has an exhaustive list of everything required. A small sample of the required disclosures:
These disclosures closely mirror the information each party is required to provide on the Sworn Financial Statement. Think of the financial statement as the summary of the assets & debts, and the supporting financial statements as the documents proving that the summary is accurate.
The court is required to divide the marital estate based upon its value at dissolution. However, as the disclosures are due within 42 days of the case starting, and it may take 6-9 months for a case to be finalized, they may be out-of-date by the time the case is being finalized.
While there is no set rule as to how current the disclosures have to be, most of the time a judge will want to see numbers that are within the past 2-3 months. And if both parties have attorneys who are preparing for trial, we will usually have disclosures dated within the past month.
So the disclosures provided at the start of the case are merely the first round - they will usually need to be updated before the end of the case unless your case was a quick, uncontested one.
Think of the initial disclosures as just the first round
If one party has not provided his/her disclosures, there are a number of remedies the other party has, including:
These remedies are not exclusive, and sometimes multiple remedies may be appropriate. Discuss how best to proceed with your lawyer if the other side is not cooperating.
The sworn financial statement is probably the single most important document a litigant provides to the domestic relations judge. Going into a contested hearing, even before any evidence is presented the judge reviews the financial statements to get a basic understanding of the parties’ finances. And if the parties have resolved all of their issues and submitted a separation agreement to the court, the judge will review the sworn financial statements to make sure the separation agreement is fair to both spouses.
The sworn financial statement is mandatory, and domestic relations judges take that requirement seriously. Even if both parties know each other’s finances, the court will not issue a decree of dissolution until financial disclosures have been submitted. And if the trial court did issue orders without the mandatory financial disclosed, they can be set aside.
The failure to provide mandatory financial disclosures resulted in the Court of Appeals upholding a trial court setting aside the parties’ financial settlement in a divorce where the wife alleged that the husband had misled her. In re Marriage of Seely, 689 P.2d 1154 (Colo.App. 1984).
Before determining child support, C.R.S. 14-10-115(8)(d) requires the Court to "review the adequacy of child support orders negotiated by the parties as well as the financial affidavit that fully discloses the financial status of the parties as required for use of the guidelines and schedule of basic child support obligations." In a case where the trial court modified support without either party's financial disclosures or even a child support worksheet, the Court of Appeals reversed.
“we conclude that the failure to submit to the court the financial information necessary to review a child support agreement and the failure of the trial court to conduct such a review renders the resulting order subject to being set aside”
Finally, offering the other party the opportunity to review the mandatory disclosures, without actually providing them, does not comply with the rule. In In re: the Marriage of Hunt, 2015 COA 58, the parties signed an agreement stating that the value of the business set aside to the husband was $250,000. The wife waived the right to a business appraisal first, and while the husband had not provided her with the business records, she also waived the right to inspect them. Before the court adopted the agreement, the wife had changed her mind, and she asked the trial judge to set aside the agreement. The trial judge nonetheless adopted the agreement, and the wife appealed. The Court of Appeals reversed, finding that merely making available the mandatory disclosures was not sufficient - they actually have to be provided.
Note, however, that a court will not let one party deliberately delay the case simply by failing to provide disclosures. As indicated above, there are remedies against the non-compliant party, and ultimately, if one spouse is not cooperative, the court may well permit the other spouse to proceed even without the required disclosures.
The sworn financial statement, and the companion financial disclosures are exhaustive. To make sure you comply with the deadlines, at Graham.Law we will provide you with the blank questionnaire and instructions immediately upon being retained. And then our paralegals start working with you to complete them. It will typically take a client hours just to gather the information, and then once our office has the disclosures, it takes time to go back & forth to make sure we have everything.
U.S. News & World Report has named Graham.Law one of the Best Law Firms in America. And our family law attorneys have years of experience helping clients navigate the Colorado family law system. We know Colorado divorce & family laws inside and out, from basic child support modifications to multimillion dollar marital estates. And we do, of course, know how to complete and to argue sworn financial statements.
For more information about our award-winning El Paso County family law firm, call us at (719) 630-1123 to set up a free consult, or click on:
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