By Rightful Advice 
A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement generally holds up when it is in writing, you and your spouse both sign it voluntarily, each of you has a fair picture of the other’s finances, and the terms are not so one-sided that a court will refuse to enforce them. Colorado writes these requirements into a single act that covers prenups and postnups alike, while Wyoming courts evaluate both under general contract law. The difference matters most if you are signing after the wedding.
Raising a marital agreement can feel uncomfortable, especially when it seems to suggest you are planning for the marriage to fail. In practice, it is a planning decision: a clear record of how you and your spouse want your finances handled, made while you can still discuss it calmly. Many couples work with a firm like Johnson Law Group, which handles prenuptial and postnuptial agreements in Colorado and Wyoming, to make sure the agreement they sign is one a court will enforce the way they intend. How your agreement is negotiated and signed can matter as much as what it says.
How Colorado Handles Prenups and Postnups
If you sign an agreement in Colorado on or after July 1, 2014, it is governed by the Uniform Premarital and Marital Agreements Act. The act applies the same standards whether you sign before the wedding or during the marriage. Your agreement must be in a record signed by both of you, and it does not need consideration, meaning something of value exchanged, to be enforceable (C.R.S. § 14-2-306).
What Courts Look At When a Colorado Agreement Is Challenged
A Colorado agreement is unenforceable if the spouse challenging it proves any one of four things under C.R.S. § 14-2-309: the spouse signed involuntarily or under duress; the spouse did not have access to independent legal representation; the agreement lacked a required notice of waiver of rights or a plain-language explanation of the rights being given up, unless the spouse had a lawyer when signing; or the spouse did not receive adequate financial disclosure before signing.
Each of those terms has a specific meaning. Access to independent legal representation requires a reasonable time to decide whether to hire a lawyer, find one, get advice, and consider it. If one of you has a lawyer, the other must also be able to afford one, or the represented spouse must agree to pay. Adequate financial disclosure means receiving a reasonably accurate description and good-faith estimate of the value of the other spouse’s property, debts, and income, or already having a reasonable basis to know that information. Colorado’s version of the act also leaves out the model law’s provision allowing a spouse to waive financial disclosure, so a complete exchange of financial information is one of the most important steps you can take.
Why Maintenance Waivers Get a Second Look
If your agreement limits or waives spousal maintenance or allocates attorney fees, Colorado adds a safeguard. Even when the agreement passes every other test, those specific provisions are unenforceable if they are unconscionable at the time someone tries to enforce them, a question the court decides as a matter of law (C.R.S. § 14-2-309). A maintenance waiver that seemed reasonable when you signed may be reviewed again years later, after careers, health, and finances have changed.
Some terms never bind a court in the first place. A Colorado agreement cannot adversely affect a child’s right to support, limit remedies available to a victim of domestic violence, or penalize a spouse for filing for divorce. Terms about parenting time and parental responsibilities are not binding on the court either (C.R.S. § 14-2-310), so decisions about your children are still made based on their best interests if the issue ever reaches a judge.
How Wyoming Courts Read a Marital Agreement
If you sign a prenup or postnup in Wyoming, courts will read it the way they read other contracts. Judges look to the plain language of the agreement as a whole and enforce clear terms as written, without adding provisions the two of you could have included but did not. A spouse who wants an agreement set aside as unconscionable generally has to show both unfair terms and an unfair bargaining process, judged as of the time the agreement was signed rather than in hindsight.
Is a Postnup Enforceable in Wyoming?
Yes, if it meets Wyoming’s contract requirements, but this is where the two states differ most. In Wyoming, a postnuptial agreement must be supported by consideration other than the marriage itself, because a marriage that already exists cannot serve as the exchange for an agreement signed afterward. In Jones v. Young, 2025 WY 130, the Wyoming Supreme Court found that requirement met by the spouses’ mutual waivers of rights to each other’s premarital property and estates, and it upheld the agreement.
The same decision shows why precise drafting matters. The agreement protected each spouse’s premarital property and the income from it, but the court held that the husband’s wages from his premarital business were not covered by that language. As a result, the home and vehicles bought with those earnings during the marriage remained subject to division. If you want your earnings during the marriage to stay separate, your agreement needs to say so directly.
Building an Agreement That Holds Up
Whether you sign before the wedding or years into the marriage, the strength of your agreement usually comes from the process behind it: enough time to review the document, complete financial disclosure, the opportunity for each of you to get independent advice, and language that says exactly what you intend. Those steps line up with what Colorado’s statute requires and with what Wyoming courts look for when an agreement is challenged.
A marital agreement is ultimately a roadmap for your financial future, and it works best when both of you understand exactly what it says. If you are considering a prenup or postnup, Johnson Law Group serves as a steady North Star through the process, explaining what the law requires, making sure your financial disclosure is complete, and drafting terms that reflect what you intend.
Schedule a free consultation to talk through your goals and your next steps.