Fleming, CO Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

Property owned before your marriage is generally considered separate property and not divided in a divorce. However, in your particular case, it may be that your parents' gift could be considered a gift to both of you since they allowed her to put her name on the deed.Also, even if the gift were exclusively to you, you probably commingled it by putting that money into a jointly owned house. You could possibly make an equitable argument about it being yours, at least as to the initial payment; however, it's more likely that a judge would rule you had commingled it and thereby let it lose its status as separate property.

Missing spouse cases are complicated because you have to petition the court to allow you to serve him by publication. Part of the petition is proving to the court that you have tried to locate him, but could not (we usually have a private investigator do an electronic search for the missing spouse and submit the PI's report to the court with the motion as evidence of trying to locate him). You then have to publish notice of the divorce in your local newspaper for 5 weeks. Once that is done, you follow all the other procedures and file all the required "normal" divorce paperwork. None of this is cheap or fast (I'd expect it to take 5-6 months). We do these cases regularly on a flat fee basis if you would like assistance. For $795, we do all the paperwork and assist/coach you through the whole process, including all of the missing spouse procedures (you are responsible for filing the documents, and court costs and fees). Our goal is to help you get though the process faster than you could on your own, make sure all the procedures and documents are done correctly. Please feel free to call me if you would like to discuss your case further. I hope this helps.

Most states are now no-fault states, so marital property division will not be affected by his allegations of cheating, nor will the court pay any attention to such allegations.