Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. If you die without a will in Colorado, state intestacy laws determine who receives your assets, and the result may not reflect your wishes. A will lets you designate beneficiaries, name a personal representative to manage your estate, and if you have minor children, name a guardian. Without a will, the court makes those decisions. A basic will is one of the most important documents most people never get around to, and one of the easiest to have done correctly.

Review your estate plan after any major life event: marriage, divorce, the birth or adoption of a child, a significant change in assets, the death of a beneficiary or named trustee, a move to a new state, or a change in your wishes. Even without a triggering event, a review every three to five years is good practice. Colorado law changes, tax laws change, and your circumstances change. An estate plan that was correct five years ago may not reflect what you want today, or may fail in ways that could have been easily avoided.

A power of attorney is a legal document that authorizes someone you trust, called your agent, to make financial or legal decisions on your behalf. A durable power of attorney remains effective even if you become incapacitated, making it an essential part of any estate plan. Without one, if you become unable to manage your own affairs, your family may need to go to court to obtain a conservatorship to act on your behalf, a costly and time-consuming process. Colorado law governs powers of attorney, and the document must meet specific requirements to be valid and accepted by financial institutions.

A durable power of attorney remains in effect if you become incapacitated, it is "durable" precisely because it survives your incapacity. A non-durable power of attorney terminates automatically if you become incapacitated. For estate planning purposes, you almost always want a durable power of attorney, because the most important scenario where an agent needs to act on your behalf is when you are unable to act for yourself. A non-durable power of attorney is used in specific transactional contexts, for example, authorizing someone to close a real estate purchase on your behalf while you are traveling.

A Colorado advance directive expresses your wishes about medical treatment if you become incapacitated and cannot speak for yourself. It can designate a medical decision-maker, specify your wishes about life-sustaining treatment, and address organ donation. Without an advance directive, your family may disagree about your care, and medical providers may be limited in what decisions they can make without court involvement. Every adult should have one, it is one of the most straightforward documents to put in place and one of the most important when it is needed.

Colorado does not have a state estate tax or inheritance tax. Federal estate tax applies only to estates above the federal exemption threshold, $15 million per individual under the One Big Beautiful Bill. Most Colorado families do not owe federal estate tax under current law, but if your estate is large enough to be affected, planning now gives you more options than planning later.

Estate planning costs vary based on what you need. A basic will, power of attorney, and advance directive can be done efficiently and cost-effectively for most individuals and couples. A comprehensive trust-based plan, revocable living trust, pour-over will, powers of attorney, and advance directives, is more involved but is the right approach for most families with real estate, retirement assets, or minor children. Hoog Law works with clients in Longmont and across Boulder County to scope plans that match your actual situation. Contact us for a consultation and we can give you a clear picture of what your plan will involve and what it will cost.

A will takes effect at death and goes through probate, the court-supervised process for transferring assets. A revocable living trust takes effect immediately, holds your assets during your lifetime, and transfers them to your beneficiaries at death without probate. Trusts are generally more private, faster, and less expensive to administer than wills, but they require more upfront work to fund properly. For most Coloradans with real estate, retirement accounts, or children who inherit at different ages, a trust is often the better planning vehicle.

A revocable living trust is a legal document that holds your assets during your lifetime and distributes them to your beneficiaries when you die, without going through probate. You create the trust, transfer your assets into it (called funding), and serve as your own trustee while you're alive. You can change or revoke the trust at any time. When you die, a successor trustee you've named distributes the assets according to your instructions. The process is private, faster than probate, and avoids court involvement. For most Colorado families with real estate or meaningful assets, a revocable living trust is often the centerpiece of a comprehensive estate plan.

A will alone may be sufficient for some people, particularly those with modest assets, no real estate, and simple family situations. But for most Colorado families, a will by itself has significant limitations: it goes through probate, it does not protect assets if you become incapacitated during your lifetime, and it offers less control over when and how beneficiaries receive assets. A revocable living trust addresses all three issues. Many people benefit from a plan that includes both: a trust as the primary document, and a pour-over will as a backstop. An attorney can help you evaluate which approach matches your situation.

A special needs trust allows you to leave assets to a person with a disability without disqualifying them from government benefits like Medicaid or SSI. If you leave money directly to a disabled beneficiary, it can disqualify them from needs-based benefits that are often essential for their care. A properly drafted special needs trust holds those assets separately and allows the trustee to use them to supplement, not replace, government benefits. These trusts require careful drafting to comply with both state and federal rules. Hoog Law drafts special needs trusts for families across Longmont and Boulder County.

The most reliable way to avoid probate in Colorado is a revocable living trust that holds your assets during your lifetime and transfers them directly to your beneficiaries at death. Other strategies include beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance, joint tenancy with right of survivorship on real property, and payable-on-death designations on bank and investment accounts. An estate plan that combines these tools correctly means your family avoids the time, cost, and public disclosure that probate involves.

Colorado probate typically takes six months to a year for a straightforward estate, and longer if assets are complex, the will is contested, or creditors raise claims. Colorado has both formal and informal probate procedures. Informal probate can move more quickly, but it still requires notices to creditors, a minimum waiting period, and court filings before assets can be distributed. The cost and delay of probate are the main reasons many Coloradans use revocable living trusts as the foundation of their estate plan, assets held in trust pass outside probate entirely.

Colorado does not require an attorney to form an LLC, the Secretary of State filing can be done online. But what you file with the state is only the starting point. The real work is choosing the right structure, drafting an operating agreement that reflects how your business will actually run, getting the tax treatment right, and making sure ownership and liability are properly documented. Formation mistakes are common and expensive to fix later, especially once there are partners, employees, or outside investors involved. Having an attorney do it correctly the first time is the lowest-cost point in the business lifecycle to get it right.

Colorado law does not require a written operating agreement, but every LLC should have one. Without it, your LLC is governed by default state rules that may not reflect how you and your co-owners want to run the business. An operating agreement covers ownership percentages, voting rights, profit and loss allocation, what happens if a member wants to leave, and what happens to a member's interest if they die or become incapacitated. Even for a single-member LLC, an operating agreement matters for maintaining liability protection. The absence of one is one of the most common errors Hoog Law sees in business formation.

An LLC is a state-law entity that provides liability protection and flexible management. An S-Corp is a federal tax election that can be applied to an LLC or corporation. A business owner who earns significant self-employment income through an LLC can sometimes reduce self-employment tax by electing S-Corp status, paying themselves a reasonable salary (subject to payroll taxes) and taking additional income as a distribution (not subject to payroll taxes). Whether the S-Corp election makes sense depends on your income level, business structure, and the administrative cost of running payroll. An attorney and CPA working together can model the comparison for your situation.

What happens to your LLC interest when you die depends on your operating agreement and your estate plan. If your operating agreement is silent, Colorado law governs, and the result may not be what you intended. A well-drafted operating agreement addresses what happens to a deceased member's interest: whether it passes to heirs, whether the LLC has a right to buy it back, and at what valuation. Your estate plan should also coordinate with the operating agreement, either holding the LLC interest in a trust or designating it properly in your will. Without both documents working together, your business interest can end up in probate or cause conflict among your heirs and business partners.

Outside general counsel (OGC) is an attorney who serves as your company's primary legal advisor on an ongoing basis, without being a full-time employee. An OGC reviews and drafts contracts, advises on legal risk, handles vendor and client agreements, supports employment decisions, and coordinates specialized legal work when needed. It is the model that makes the most sense for small and mid-size businesses that need regular legal support but cannot justify a full-time in-house attorney. Hoog Law serves as outside general counsel for several Longmont and Front Range businesses, providing a consistent legal relationship at a predictable cost.

Business succession planning is the process of deciding what happens to your business when you retire, become incapacitated, or die, and putting the legal structures in place to make that transition happen the way you intend. Without a plan, a business can face conflict among heirs, forced liquidation, or loss of key relationships. A succession plan may include buy-sell agreements, transfer restrictions in the operating agreement, life insurance to fund a buyout, and coordination with your personal estate plan. The earlier the planning begins, the more options are available. Hoog Law works with business owners in Longmont and Boulder County on succession plans that protect what they've built.

You are not legally required to have an attorney review a contract, but whether you should depends on what's at stake. For significant business agreements, vendor contracts, commercial leases, client service agreements, asset purchase agreements, the cost of legal review is modest compared to the cost of a dispute or an obligation you didn't understand you were signing. Many contract problems are invisible at signing and only surface when something goes wrong. An attorney can identify ambiguous terms, one-sided provisions, indemnification traps, and missing protections before you sign. Hoog Law reviews and drafts commercial contracts for Longmont and Boulder County businesses.

Colorado SB 26-189, signed in May 2026, replaced the earlier SB 205 AI anti-discrimination law. It regulates the use of automated decision-making technology (ADMT) in consequential decisions involving employment, education, financial services, healthcare, housing, and essential government services. If your business uses any software or algorithm that materially contributes to a significant decision about an employee, customer, or applicant in those categories, SB 26-189 likely applies to you. The law takes effect January 1, 2027. Covered deployers must provide pre-decision notice, allow individuals to appeal adverse decisions, and retain records for at least three years.

If SB 26-189 applies to your business, having an attorney review your compliance posture before January 2027 is worth doing. The law is narrow enough that many small businesses fall outside it, but the use-based framing catches some companies that assumed they were exempt under the prior law. The AG rulemaking is not yet finished, which means specific requirements are still being defined. Building a compliance program against an incomplete regulatory text is easier with guidance. Hoog Law advises Colorado businesses on AI compliance, helping them assess whether SB 26-189 applies, what obligations it creates, and what a practical compliance program looks like.

An AI governance program is the internal framework your organization uses to identify, assess, document, and manage the AI systems it uses or develops. Whether you need a formal program depends on your size, sector, and how you use AI. For businesses covered by SB 26-189, some governance infrastructure is required. For businesses outside SB 26-189, a governance program still reduces risk, satisfies vendor and partner expectations, and positions you well for compliance as the regulatory landscape expands. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework is the baseline most regulators and enterprise buyers reference today, and building around it keeps your program portable as specific laws change.

The Colorado Attorney General has exclusive enforcement authority under SB 26-189. There is no private right of action. A 60-day cure window applies through January 1, 2030, meaning that for most violations, you have an opportunity to correct the problem before civil penalties attach. Civil penalties can still apply for violations that aren't cured. Companies that build reasonable compliance programs before the January 2027 effective date are better positioned to take advantage of the cure window if the AG identifies an issue.

As of mid-2026, no enacted federal law preempts Colorado SB 26-189, but two federal developments are worth watching. The Great American AI Act, introduced in June 2026, contains a preemption provision targeting model-development regulation. Because SB 26-189 regulates how ADMT is used in consequential decisions rather than how models are built, it would likely survive that provision as written. The second development is a proposed FTC policy statement released July 1, 2026, which argues that state AI laws requiring AI systems to alter their outputs to avoid disparate impact liability may be impliedly preempted by Section 5 of the FTC Act. The FTC singled out Colorado's prior law as an example. Legal commentators are skeptical that a non-binding policy statement creates enforceable preemptive effect, and SB 26-189's disclosure-and-notice framework is less vulnerable to this theory than its predecessor was. The comment period on the FTC statement closes July 31, 2026. Building compliance for SB 26-189 now, rather than waiting for federal clarity, remains the more defensible approach.

The NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) is a voluntary governance framework published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It provides a structured way for organizations to identify, assess, and manage risks from AI systems across four functions: Govern, Map, Measure, and Manage. Multiple federal regulators reference NIST AI RMF principles in enforcement guidance, including the FTC, EEOC, and CFPB. Federal contractors increasingly face NIST AI RMF expectations in procurement. Compliance programs built around the NIST framework are more portable when specific laws change than programs built tightly to specific regulatory text, which matters in Colorado where the governing AI law changed entirely between 2025 and 2026.