Après la signature de votre testament du Colorado

The original, and where it lives

The signed original is the will a court admits. Keep it where it is safe and can be found, and tell your personal representative where. Colorado lets you, or your agent, deposit your will with any court for safekeeping under the court's rules: it is sealed and kept confidential, and during your life it is delivered only to you or to a person you authorize in a signed writing (C.R.S. §15-11-515).

After your death, whoever has custody of your will delivers it to the court with probate jurisdiction in the county where you lived, within ten days after the death or as soon after as the custodian learns of it; a person who willfully fails to deliver a will is liable for the damages that causes (C.R.S. §15-11-516).

How it was signed, and the self-proving affidavit

A Colorado will is in writing and signed by you, and either signed by two witnesses within a reasonable time after they witnessed your signing or your acknowledgment, or acknowledged before a notary or another individual authorized to take acknowledgments; a will whose signature and material portions are in your handwriting is valid as a holographic will (C.R.S. §15-11-502).

A will signed with witnesses may be made self-proved — when it is signed or at any time afterward — by your acknowledgment and the witnesses' affidavits before an officer authorized to administer oaths (C.R.S. §15-11-504). A self-proved will is easier to admit because the witnesses need not be found later.

Your personal representative

Colorado calls the executor a personal representative. The court appoints the person your will nominates, who gathers the property that passes through the estate, pays valid claims and distributes the rest under the will. Part of that work is publishing a notice to creditors — not less than three times, once in each of three successive calendar weeks (C.R.S. §15-12-801) — after which claims are barred unless presented in time, and in any event within one year after the death (§15-12-803).

Choose someone able and willing to do the work, name an alternate, and tell them where the will and your records are.

What changes a will

A will or part of one is revoked by a later will that revokes it expressly or by inconsistency, or by a revocatory act — burning, tearing, canceling, obliterating or destroying it — that you perform with that intent, or that another performs in your conscious presence and at your direction (C.R.S. §15-11-507). Changing a will is done with a new will or a codicil signed with the same formalities (§15-11-502); writing on the old one is not a reliable way to change it.

A divorce changes a will by law: unless the will's express terms, a court order or a marital contract provide otherwise, a divorce or annulment revokes the will's dispositions to the former spouse and the former spouse's relatives, and their nomination as personal representative (C.R.S. §15-11-804). A marriage, a birth or a death in the family is a reason to read the will again.

A will and a trust together

Many Colorado plans pair a will with a revocable trust: the will leaves whatever is in your name at death to your trustee — a pour-over — and the trust governs it from there. Property that passes outside the will does so on its own terms: beneficiary designations, joint ownership with survivorship, and a beneficiary deed recorded during your life (C.R.S. §15-15-402).

What happens at your death

Your will is lodged with the court (C.R.S. §15-11-516). Property in your name passes under it — through a probate administration, or for a small estate of personal property by affidavit at any time ten or more days after the death where the estate does not exceed the statute's adjusted amount (§15-12-1201).

A surviving spouse may elect an amount equal to fifty percent of the value of the marital-property portion of the augmented estate instead of what the will gives (C.R.S. §15-11-202), and in a probate estate the spouse — or the dependent children — are entitled to exempt property and a reasonable family allowance (§§15-11-403, 15-11-404). Without a valid will, property in your name passes by intestacy (§§15-11-102, 15-11-103).

When a licensed Colorado attorney is the right next call

TrusteeClear explains what the statute provides; it does not review a will, say what is missing from one, or draft changes. Many people return to a licensed Colorado attorney of their choosing after a marriage, divorce, birth or death in the family, a move to or from Colorado, or a significant change in what they own.