Your state’s pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the Colorado T&E solo who knows the Colorado Probate Code (C.R.S. Title 15, UPC-based) cold but still loses an afternoon a week hunting the current homestead number, the Health First Colorado (LTSS) posture, whether the latest Colorado Supreme Court / CBA Formal Ethics Opinion opinion changes how you scope an engagement, or whether a recent Colorado Court of Appeals decision just moved the law on capacity, undue influence, or a trustee’s duties. What’s below is what mattered in Colorado lately — the week’s developments and the recent rulings from the bench.
For licensed attorneys. This pack is general legal information and professional commentary for practicing attorneys — it is not legal advice, does not apply to any specific matter, and creates no attorney-client relationship. Verify every authority against the cited primary source before relying on it with a client. Published by Mike Moss, a Utah-admitted attorney, as an AI-enablement information product; it is not an offer of legal services and is not a representation that the author is admitted to practice in your jurisdiction.
Three developments from the last several weeks that I think actually matter to a Colorado T&E solo. Each one has a read that lands on your practice specifically — and each one comes with the citation so you can verify the detail yourself before you use it with a client.
Per the Colorado Judicial Branch RPC Standing Committee, the Colorado Supreme Court adopted AI-specific amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct effective January 8, 2026 — a new Scope [20A] plus amended comments to Rule 1.1 — making Colorado the first state to embed AI guidance directly in its RPC. The amendments build on the Colorado Bar Association’s Formal Ethics Opinion 145, which addresses AI under competence, confidentiality, fees, and supervision.
If you use AI-assisted drafting or research, Colorado now gives you an in-state, binding frame rather than borrowed ABA guidance — so square your practice to it directly: verify AI output against the primary source under the Rule 1.1 competence comments, protect client confidences in tool inputs, and keep fees honest. This is the controlling authority for any AI work you do for a Colorado client; don’t default to out-of-state opinions when your own court has spoken.
Colorado Judicial Branch · RPC Standing Committee (amendments eff. Jan. 8, 2026) · coloradojudicial.gov · CBA Formal Op. 145
House Bill 26-1100, Chapter 227, Session Laws of Colorado 2026, approved May 29, 2026. Section 1 adds C.R.S. § 15-14-103, twenty-one enumerated rights, (a) through (u), for an adult subject to guardianship — among them the right to a competent guardian who advocates for the ward’s goals and prioritizes their desires including medical-treatment preferences, cultural practices and religious beliefs; to participate to the extent possible in decisions about care, residence, activities and social interactions, and about how their property is managed; to a lawyer who advocates for the outcome the ward wants; to be present and participate in all court hearings; to share concerns or complaints about the guardianship with the court; and to ask the court to review whether the guardianship should change, continue or end and whether the guardian is an appropriate fit. Subsection (2) lists what a court may authorize a guardian to decide: the ward’s social environment and the social aspects of their personal life, filing and defending lawsuits, making contracts, making gifts of the ward’s money, and managing the ward’s money and property. Subsection (3) provides that the ward retains the right to vote, to maintain reproductive health and the ability to procreate, and to change marital status, unless the court restricts those rights by stating the restrictions and the relevant findings supporting them in the order appointing the guardian. Subsection (4) preserves the court’s existing authority and the standards for appointing, scoping, modifying or terminating a guardianship; subsection (5) states the section creates no new cause of action and affects no existing one. Section 3 amends § 15-14-314(2) and adds paragraph (h): a guardian shall notify the ward, to the extent reasonably feasible and at least thirty days before the change if possible, at the ward’s primary dwelling, of a forthcoming permanent move to a nursing home, mental health institution, or other facility that places restrictions on the ward’s ability to leave or have visitors — unless the move is proposed in the guardian’s plan or authorized by the court by specific order.
Two things change in a Colorado guardianship practice on August 12, and both land in documents you draft. First, the appointment order is now doing work it did not do before: § 15-14-103(3) leaves voting, reproductive autonomy and marital status WITH the ward by default, so where a restriction is genuinely warranted the order has to state the restriction and the findings that support it. An order that stays silent does not reach those rights. Draft to the subsection (2) list of authorized decisions rather than to a general grant, because that list is now the statutory vocabulary a court is working from. Second, the thirty-day notice in § 15-14-314(2)(h) is a standing duty on every guardian you advise, and its exception is narrow — it lifts only where the move is proposed in the guardian’s plan or authorized by specific court order. The practical move is to build an anticipated placement into the guardian’s plan at appointment, so a later transfer is already authorized instead of racing a notice period during a health crisis. Read the section before relying on any single right in it: subsection (5) creates no cause of action, so this is a drafting-and-compliance change, not a new claim.
House Bill 26-1100, Ch. 227, Session Laws of Colo. 2026, adding C.R.S. § 15-14-103 and amending § 15-14-314(2); approved May 29, 2026; effective 12:01 a.m. Aug. 12, 2026 · LEG.COLORADO.GOV · HB26-1100
House Bill 26-1189, Chapter 47, Session Laws of Colorado 2026, approved April 13, 2026, amends C.R.S. § 15-20-103 (“Included and excluded property”) — the scope section of the Uniform Community Property Disposition at Death Act, which Colorado had already adopted. This act clarifies what that act reaches; it is not a new adoption. Before the amendment, the included-property list in subsection (1)(a) was conditioned on the decedent having been “domiciled in this state at the time of death.” New subsection (1)(b) adds a second and domicile-independent category: regardless of whether a decedent was domiciled in Colorado at the time of death, the act applies to (I) all or a proportionate part of each item of real property located in Colorado that is traceable to community property, or acquired with community property, under the law of the jurisdiction where the decedent or the surviving community property spouse was domiciled when the property was acquired or, after acquisition, became community property; and (II) income, rent, profit, appreciation, or other increase derived from or traceable to that real property. The act also amends subsection (1)(a)(III).
The client this catches is the one it is easiest to miss — a couple who built community property in one of the nine community-property states, bought Colorado real estate with it, and then retired, moved or died somewhere else entirely. Under the prior scope section, Colorado’s UCPDDA analysis turned on where the decedent was domiciled at death, so Colorado land bought with California or Texas community property could sit outside it. From August 12 the land itself is the hook, and the tracing question runs to the law of the jurisdiction where the spouses were domiciled when the property was acquired or became community property — so the inquiry reaches back across state lines and across years, not just to the death certificate. Practically: when a new matter involves Colorado real estate and any prior community-property domicile, establish when the property was bought and with what, before you assume how title passes or how basis is treated. The deed alone will not tell you.
House Bill 26-1189, Ch. 47, Session Laws of Colo. 2026, amending C.R.S. § 15-20-103; approved Apr. 13, 2026; effective 12:01 a.m. Aug. 12, 2026 · LEG.COLORADO.GOV · HB26-1189
Decisions that bind a Colorado practitioner — Colorado’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering Colorado, including the U.S. Tenth Circuit — read for what actually changes how you draft, advise, and plan. Trusts and estates broadly, not Medicaid alone: wills and capacity, undue influence, fiduciary duty, trust construction, and estate recovery. One read, the holding, and the official cite.
This lane reads each new opinion from Colorado’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering Colorado (Tenth Circuit) before anything lands here, and reads-and-discards matters that aren’t trusts-and-estates — criminal, family, commercial/LLC fiduciary, tax, and cases where an estate or trust is only a party. For this period’s trailing window, no new verified trusts-and-estates or estate-recovery decision from those courts was identified in the sources reviewed.
Nothing to re-paper from the bench this period; controlling authority is unchanged. When the next verified T&E ruling issues, it lands here with the holding and the official cite.
Controlling authority unchanged · Colorado appellate courts · U.S. Tenth Circuit.
This week in Colorado for the T&E solo with Health First Colorado clients: the developments from the Colorado Bar Association (Trust & Estate Section), the Colorado Supreme Court, and HCPF that actually moved your practice this period — each one primary-source verified.
Bar and Medicaid changes land on different schedules and aren’t indexed by practice focus. Every item here was checked against its primary source, with the link, so you can verify before relying on it.