Finding out your spouse had an affair is painful. Finding out they paid for it with your money is a second wound. Colorado Legal Group attorney Laura McClure calls it exactly that: “It’s like double betrayal.”
Because Colorado is a no-fault divorce state, many people assume the affair simply does not matter once a case is filed. Legally, the affair itself usually does not change how property is divided. The money is a different story. When marital funds are spent on an affair partner, Colorado law gives you real tools to get that money back.
Key Takeaways
- Colorado divides property “without regard to marital misconduct,” so the affair alone will not earn you a larger share.
- Spending marital money on an affair partner is a financial issue, not a moral one, and courts can account for it.
- Once a divorce is filed, an automatic temporary injunction bars both spouses from disposing of marital property outside ordinary spending.
- Money spent in violation of that injunction, or wasted on an affair, can be charged against the spending spouse’s share.
- Business owners sometimes hide affair spending inside the company, which is why business records and forensic accountants matter.
Colorado Is No-Fault, but the Money Still Counts
Under C.R.S. 14-10-113, a Colorado court divides marital property “without regard to marital misconduct.” You cannot walk into court and ask for more of the marital estate because your spouse cheated. Laura put it plainly on the podcast: the court cannot say, “Oh, well, he had an affair, he’s a bad guy, in that case I’m going to give you more of the marital estate.”
What the court can consider is money. The same statute directs judges to weigh all relevant factors, including each spouse’s economic circumstances. Dissipation of marital assets, sometimes called marital waste, is the legal term for one spouse using shared money for a purpose that has nothing to do with the marriage. Spending on an affair partner is one of the clearest examples. For a broader look at where cheating does and does not matter, see our guide on how adultery affects divorce in Colorado.
What Counts as Affair Spending
In Laura’s experience, affair spending is rarely subtle. The patterns she sees most often include:
- Trips, hotels and dinners with the affair partner
- Lavish gifts, jewelry and shopping sprees
- Rent, a car or other living expenses for the affair partner
- Raises, bonuses or direct deposits to an affair partner who works for the family business
- Buying furniture and home goods in anticipation of a new life after the divorce
That last category surprises people. “Maybe you’re thinking you’re going to start a new relationship,” Laura explained. Setting up a future household with marital money before the estate has been divided can be treated the same way as a gift to the affair partner.
The amounts are not always small. Asked about the biggest “gotcha” moment of her career, Laura described discovering that a spouse “had spent tens of thousands of dollars on their affair partner” before the other spouse even knew the affair existed.
The Automatic Temporary Injunction Draws a Line on Day One
Every Colorado divorce starts with a built-in financial freeze. Under C.R.S. 14-10-107, an automatic temporary injunction takes effect against the spouse who files as soon as the petition is filed, and against the other spouse once they are served or accept service. The official Colorado divorce summons spells out what it does. Both spouses are restrained from “transferring, encumbering, concealing or in any way disposing of” marital property without the other spouse’s consent or a court order, “except in the usual course of business or for the necessities of life.”
The injunction also requires each spouse to notify the other of any proposed extraordinary expenditure and to account to the court for extraordinary expenditures made after it takes effect. It stays in place until the final decree, a dismissal, or a further court order.
“There’s this automatic temporary injunction that’s issued by the court that says, ‘Hey, you’ve got to preserve this pie. I know I’m going to divide the pie at the end, so you’ve got to preserve it.’ You’ve got to continue operating based on the financial status quo, only spending ordinary and necessary expenses as established during the marriage. And obviously, buying stuff for your affair partner, that’s not a marital expense.”
Groceries, the mortgage and the kids’ activities are ordinary. A weekend in Cabo with someone else is not.
Two Ways to Get the Money Back
1. Show the spending violated the injunction
If affair spending happened after the case was filed, your attorney can present it to the court as a violation of the temporary injunction. Because the injunction is a court order, violating it can expose the spending spouse to additional remedies, including contempt proceedings in appropriate cases. More commonly, the practical goal is simple: make sure the money comes back out of the right person’s share.
2. Make a marital waste argument
If the spending is significant, or happened as the marriage was falling apart but before anyone filed, your attorney can argue dissipation. The goal, in Laura’s words, is to “claw back” the money.
“You want to make sure that any of those expenditures on the affair partner come out of the other party’s half of the pie. And before you know it, the court is allocating a disparate distribution, not upon a finding of fault, but based on ‘Hey, that wasn’t fair. You shouldn’t have been spending our money on your affair partner.’”
Here is a simplified illustration. Say a couple has $400,000 in marital assets left at the time of divorce, and one spouse spent $40,000 of marital funds on an affair partner. If the court treats that $40,000 as dissipated, it can count it as part of the marital estate and charge it against the spending spouse’s share. Instead of each spouse taking $200,000 of what remains, the faithful spouse might receive $220,000 and the other $180,000. Every case is different, and judges have discretion, but this is the basic mechanism.
You can read more about how Colorado judges approach division generally in our guide to how assets are divided in a Colorado divorce.
When the Affair Partner Is on the Business Payroll
Some of the most aggressive affair spending Laura has seen happens inside a family business. She described cases where a business owner was “having an affair with an employee of that business and then trying to funnel money” to that person, sometimes before the divorce was filed and sometimes after. The methods ranged from raises and direct deposits to expensive gifts.
Business owners often assume this is safe because the company’s books feel separate from the household’s.
“Maybe they think, ‘Oh, the business financials are not going to be disclosed. I only have to disclose my personal financials.’ And then next thing you know, you’re appointing an expert or issuing discovery on the other side to obtain those business financials, and really validating your client’s concerns.”
If your spouse owns a company, the business records are often where the real story is. Our article on what happens to a small business in a Colorado divorce explains how a business is valued and divided, and our Weld County hidden assets case result shows what tracing can uncover.
Many People Discover the Affair Through Discovery
Not every client knows about the affair when they walk in. Colorado Legal Group attorney David Crum said it often surfaces mid-case, while reviewing financial records: “I’m looking at financial transactions and then I’m asking my client, like, what is this? And she doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t have an answer. And it ultimately leads to spending money on a boyfriend or girlfriend.”
Laura has had the same experience in multiple cases. Often, the client “had a bad feeling, initiated the divorce, and down the line that feeling is validated and they realize, oh, I was not crazy all along.”
Every Colorado divorce requires mandatory financial disclosures. When those are not enough, your attorney can request records from a longer time period and look for transfers to unfamiliar accounts. In complex cases, a forensic accountant can analyze the full financial picture. That is the step Laura describes as one of the more extreme moves available, and it is often the one that finds the money. Our guide to what to do if you think your spouse is hiding assets covers the discovery tools in more detail.
Will the Judge Hold the Affair Against Your Spouse?
Legally, the affair is not a reason to divide property unequally. Practically, judges are people. Laura was candid about this: “We say ‘the court,’ but it’s a human being with their own biases and their own affinities and maybe their own beliefs about infidelity.”
The bigger practical effect is often on credibility. A spouse who quietly moved tens of thousands of dollars to an affair partner, then swore to a complete financial disclosure, has a harder time being believed on every other contested issue in the case. Evidence of affair spending is a financial argument first, and a credibility problem for the other side second.
What to Do If You Suspect Affair Spending
- Do not move money yourself. The temporary injunction applies to both spouses. Emptying a joint account in response can hurt your own case.
- Collect what you can lawfully access. Joint bank and credit card statements, tax returns and shared household records are fair game. Do not log into your spouse’s private accounts or install tracking software. Our article on using texts, email and social media in a divorce explains why that matters.
- Write down what looks wrong. Unfamiliar accounts, recurring charges, Venmo or Zelle payments to a name you do not recognize, or a new employee whose pay jumped.
- Tell your attorney what you do not know. Many spouses never managed the family finances. Laura’s advice: “If you were a stay-at-home husband or wife and you didn’t really manage your financial affairs during the marriage, that’s okay. Be sure to tell me what you don’t know so that I can supplement and make sure that we look into that further.”
- Weigh the cost of digging. Extended discovery and forensic accounting cost money. A good attorney will help you decide whether the amount at stake justifies it. See our tips on controlling discovery costs in a divorce.
If the finances feel overwhelming, Laura’s reassurance to clients is worth repeating: reviewing financial disclosures is “the bread and butter of divorce attorneys.” There is a pattern to the review, and an experienced attorney knows where to look.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Colorado give a bigger share of property to the spouse who was cheated on?
Not because of the affair itself. Colorado divides property without regard to marital misconduct. However, if marital money was spent on the affair, the court can account for that spending when dividing what remains.
What is dissipation of marital assets?
Dissipation, also called marital waste, is one spouse using marital funds for purposes unrelated to the marriage, such as gifts, trips or support for an affair partner. Courts can charge dissipated funds against the spending spouse’s share of the estate.
Can I recover money my spouse spent on an affair before we filed for divorce?
Possibly. The automatic temporary injunction only applies once a case is filed, but spending that happened before filing, particularly as the marriage was breaking down, can still be raised as dissipation. Records and timing matter.
Is my spouse allowed to spend money during our divorce?
Yes, for ordinary living expenses, the usual course of business and the necessities of life. Extraordinary expenditures require notice to the other spouse and must be accounted for to the court.
Contact Colorado Legal Group Today
If you suspect your spouse has been spending marital money on an affair, the earlier you act, the more of it can be traced. Laura McClure represents clients in complex property division and high net worth divorces from Colorado Legal Group’s Denver office. Schedule a free strategy session and ask for Laura directly.
Want the full conversation? Listen to Laura and David on Confessions of a Divorce Assassin.
This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Every case depends on its own facts. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.