Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: Colorado’s advisory maintenance-term guideline table runs only through 20-year marriages; beyond that, the statute switches from a formula to open judicial discretion for indefinite maintenance.
The rule that changes the answer in Colorado
Under C.R.S. § 14-10-114(3)(b): “The advisory term of maintenance under the guidelines, calculated in whole months, for marriages of at least three years but not more than twenty years, is set forth in the table contained in subsection (3)(b)(II)(B) of this section.”
“When the duration of the parties’ marriage exceeds twenty years, the court may award maintenance for a specified term of years or for an indefinite term, but the court shall not specify a maintenance term that is less than the maintenance term under the guidelines for a twenty-year marriage without making specific findings that support a reduced term of maintenance.”
What this means for duration
The guideline table only covers marriages of 3 to 20 years; past 20 years, courts may award a specified term or an indefinite term, but cannot go below the 20-year guideline amount without written findings.
Why this matters for a later-life divorce
This creates a statutory floor for a 20+ year marriage: whatever the guideline table would award at exactly 20 years is presumptively the minimum, unless the court makes specific findings otherwise.
Read it yourself
Read the full official text before relying on any figure here. Alimony law is fact-specific and this rule is only one input to a court’s decision, not a guaranteed outcome. This is a source-backed planning guide, not individualized legal advice.
Read directly from the official 2024 Colorado Revised Statutes PDF at content.leg.colorado.gov (the Colorado General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Legal Services), programmatically extracted and hand-checked against the extracted text.
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