When should you organize your family's estate? The seven moments in life that call for planning

Almost no one organizes their estate on some ordinary Tuesday, for no reason. We organize it —or fail to organize it— when life changes: a wedding, a cohabitation that settles into permanence, a child who is born, a business that starts up, a relationship that ends, an age that arrives. That is why the right question is almost never "which legal figure suits me", but a simpler and more uncomfortable one: is this the moment to put in order what I have?

The legal answer carries a nuance few people know: in Colombia, estate law rewards anticipation and distrusts reaction. Whoever plans calmly may choose among capitulaciones, patrimonio de familia, afectación a vivienda familiar, corporate structures or a will. Whoever reacts when there are already debts or lawsuits finds narrow ground, watched over by the acción pauliana, the suspect periods of insolvency and the penalty for simulación. The tools the law offers generously to the far-sighted close one by one on whoever arrives late.

This guide is built on that idea. It does not explain estate organization step by step —we set out that route in organizing your estate step by step— nor the technical detail of each figure. It concentrates on the when: the seven moments that, in our experience accompanying families and business owners, make it necessary to sit down and plan, and what happens when they are allowed to pass.

The essentials

• The "when" defines the "what". Each milestone opens some tools and closes others: capitulaciones can only be agreed before the marriage, the patrimonio de familia requires a property free of any mortgage, and the SAS protects going forward, not backward.
• Organizing in time is lawful; reacting late can be fraud. The Código Civil allows creditors to challenge acts entered into to their detriment (article 2491), and the insolvency regime looks back as far as twenty-four months (Ley 1116 de 2006, article 74).
• Seven moments concentrate the decisions: marrying or moving in together, having children, starting a business, buying a home, the couple's crisis, inheritance and old age, and —the worst scenario for planning— when the debts have already arrived.
• It is never too early. All the preventive figures share a silent requirement: being created when no crisis is in sight and full capacity to decide is still intact.
• The review is periodic, not a one-time exercise. Marriages, births, break-ups, inheritances received or changes in the law —such as the one that changed the legítimas in 2018— justify looking at the structure again every few years.

Why the "when" matters more than the "how"

Two families can use the same legal figures with opposite results. The one that constitutes a patrimonio de familia on the day it buys its house, young and free of debt, raises a solid protection for decades. The one that tries to constitute it when it has already been served with an enforcement claim discovers two things: that the figure is not even available if the property is mortgaged, and that, even once obtained, earlier creditors may ask the judge to set it aside as having been created to their detriment. The tool is the same; the moment changed everything.

That timeline logic runs through the whole of Colombian estate law. The starting point is severe: under article 2488 of the Código Civil, "every personal obligation gives the creditor the right to pursue its enforcement against all the real or movable property of the debtor, whether present or future". This is the creditors' general security over all the debtor's assets (prenda general): as a rule, you are liable with everything you have and with everything you come to have. The protective figures are exceptions to that rule, and they are granted to whoever builds them in good faith, before the specific risk exists.

When protection is attempted afterwards, the legal system reacts. The acción pauliana under article 2491 of the Código Civil allows contracts for value entered into to the detriment of creditors to be rescinded where both parties knew of the poor state of the debtor's affairs, and gratuitous acts —a gift, a release of debt— on proof of nothing more than the debtor's bad faith and the harm. If the debtor is a business owner who ends up in insolvency, the window is wider: the insolvency judge may avoid transfers made in the eighteen months and gratuitous acts made in the twenty-four months preceding the proceeding. The law even rewards the creditor who sues successfully with forty percent of the value recovered: your creditors have a real economic incentive to dig into your recent past.

There is also a less visible cost: negotiating in a crisis means negotiating with no room. Whoever organizes calmly compares options, structures in stages and decides without pressure; whoever organizes with an attachment already upon them signs whatever they can get. That is why this article does not ask which figure is better in the abstract, but which moment of life you are in and what it is best to decide there.

Moment 1: before marrying or moving in together

The first great estate milestone is not buying the house: it is the decision to share your life with someone. In Colombia that decision produces automatic financial effects, whether you know it or not. If you marry without agreeing anything, article 1774 of the Código Civil provides that "by the mere fact of marriage" the sociedad conyugal is contracted. From that day on, the salaries each of you earns and the fruits and income of the community assets and of your own assets feed a common pool that will be divided in halves when the regime is dissolved. The properties each of you owned before remain vested in their owner, but what the two of you build during the union —including the returns on what was your own— belongs, as gananciales, to both.

The only opportunity to agree different rules before that regime comes into being is the capitulaciones matrimoniales. Article 1771 of the Código Civil defines them as the agreements that the spouses enter into before contracting marriage, concerning the property they bring to it and the gifts they wish to make to each other. The word "before" is not an ornament: once the marriage has been celebrated, the window closes for good. Anyone who is already married and wants to separate their financial fate must turn to a different figure —the voluntary dissolution of the sociedad conyugal, which we will see later on— with different requirements and effects.

Who should consider them with particular care? Those who come to marriage with very unequal estates; those who have children from an earlier union; those who hold a stake in a family business whose shareholders do not want a future divorce to turn an outsider into a party interested in the shares; and those who start a business. Capitulaciones are not a gesture of distrust: they are a map of rules agreed at the best moment of the relationship, which is exactly when no one is fighting.

Cohabitation without marriage has its own calendar, and it runs on its own. Ley 54 de 1990 recognizes the de facto marital union (unión marital de hecho) as the permanent and exclusive community of life between two adults not married to each other, and its article 2, as amended by Ley 979 de 2005, presumes a sociedad patrimonial where the union has lasted no less than two years. From then on, whatever is acquired through the work of either of them belongs to the common estate, with no ceremony and no signature: many people find out that they had a sociedad patrimonial on the day the relationship ends and the other claims it. Since Sentencia C-075 de 2007, that regime protects same-sex couples equally.

If you are living together and do not want that community to form, or you want to shape it differently, the moment to act is before the period consolidates: notarial practice accepts financial agreements between permanent partners, which must be designed with advice so that they withstand judicial scrutiny. And if you have an earlier sociedad conyugal that has not been dissolved, the situation calls for immediate review, because the two regimes can overlap. The full picture of cohabitation is in the de facto marital union (unión marital de hecho, a Colombian statutory institution; not the same as common-law marriage).

Moment 2: the arrival of children

A child changes the nature of the estate question: it is no longer only about how what two adults have built is divided, but about how a roof and support are secured for someone who cannot protect themselves. And it changes the legal board: each child is a legitimario, a forced heir whose share the law safeguards against the will of the child's own father or mother.

The emblematic tool of this moment is the patrimonio de familia inembargable under Ley 70 de 1931. Its article 1 authorizes the creation, in favor of every family, of a special estate "with the quality of not being subject to attachment", and its article 21 says it without circumlocution: it is not subject to attachment, not even in the event of the beneficiary's bankruptcy, and any consent the beneficiary may give to an attachment has no effect whatsoever. Whatever happens with the parents' business affairs, the family home stays beyond the reach of enforcement. In vivienda de interés social it is not even optional: article 60 of Ley 9ª de 1989, as amended by Ley 3ª de 1991, requires it to be constituted in the very act of purchase, and the property remains exposed only to the entity that financed its acquisition or improvement.

The Corte Constitucional, moreover, extended the figure to the reality of Colombian families: in Sentencia C-107 de 2017 it upheld articles 4 and 5 of Ley 70 de 1931 subject to the understanding that the protection also covers extended families —grandparents raising grandchildren—, de facto parental families (de crianza) and single-person families. If your household does not fit the classic mold, the protection exists just the same.

The second move of this moment is less well known and more countercultural: the early will. In Colombia we associate making a will with old age, but young parents with minor children are the ones with the most reason to make one. A well-built will makes it possible to order substitutions —to provide for who receives an allocation if the person primarily called to it is not there—, to organize how the assets a minor receives will be managed, and to reduce the uncertainty of a succession at the worst moment imaginable for the family. None of that is improvised well: it is designed calmly, granted before a notary and updated when the family changes.

A word of calm to close: the arrival of children is not the time to transfer assets to them "to get a head start on the inheritance". Gifts have requirements of their own —including insinuación notarial, which we will see in moment six—, they are as a general rule irrevocable, and they can leave the parents vulnerable decades too early. At this stage the aim is to protect and to provide, not to part with what you have.

Moment 3: starting a business or taking on debt

Starting a business is, legally speaking, signing: leases, promissory notes, loans, guarantees. And every signature commits the prenda general of article 2488 of the Código Civil: all your assets, present and future. If you start a business without separating estates, the failure of the business —a statistically normal scenario, not a disgrace— drags down the house, the car and the family's savings. That is why this is the moment where the "when" has the most dramatic effect: the separation between personal assets and business assets works fully only if it is built before taking on the debts.

The natural instrument is the sociedad por acciones simplificada. Article 1 of Ley 1258 de 2008 provides that the shareholders are liable only up to the amount of their contributions and that, save in the case of fraud, they do not take on the labor, tax or any other obligations of the company. Used well, the SAS is an honest wall between business risk and the family table.

But the wall has three cracks worth knowing about before you trust it. The first is legal: article 42 of the same statute allows the legal personality to be disregarded where the company is used "in fraud of the law or to the detriment of third parties"; the shareholders and officers who carried out or facilitated the fraudulent acts are jointly and severally liable. The SAS protects the serious business owner, not the one who uses it as a front. The second is contractual and it is the most frequent: if the bank asks you to sign as co-debtor or guarantor of your company's loan —and it will—, you have waived the shield as regards that debt. The third concerns management: whoever manages answers for their management, under the regime governing officers that corporate law provides.

The second typical decision for an entrepreneur who is married or in a consolidated union is what to do with the sociedad conyugal or the sociedad patrimonial. As long as it exists, half of the gananciales you build up is exposed to your business risk, and vice versa. Numeral 5 of article 1820 of the Código Civil allows spouses with legal capacity to dissolve and liquidate it by mutual agreement, through an escritura pública with an inventory of assets and debts, without divorcing or separating. Done in time —before heavy borrowing—, that move prevents the shipwreck of a business from also carrying off the other spouse's gananciales.

Done at the wrong time, it is of little use: the same provision states that the spouses are jointly and severally liable toward creditors whose title predates the registration of the deed. Dissolving the sociedad conyugal does not erase the debts that already existed; it only reorganizes the future. It is, once again, the logic of this entire guide.

What organizing is not: simulating. Selling the house to your brother "on paper" or signing private counter-documents that say the opposite of the escritura pública. Article 1766 of the Código Civil deprives those counter-deeds of any effect against third parties, and civil case law has spent a century undoing simulated sales at the request of creditors —and, frequently, of the relative who later refuses to give the asset back—. Whoever simulates does not organize their estate: they place it in someone else's hands and add a lawsuit to it. The legitimate catalog of instruments is in the strategies for protecting your assets, and the profile of the professional worth involving, in a lawyer specializing in property and estate law.

Moment 4: buying a home

Few deeds concentrate as many estate decisions as the one for the purchase of the family home. That day —not later— it is decided whether the house is protected against future creditors, whether it can be sold or mortgaged without the other spouse's signature, and under which figure. Arriving at the notary's office without having thought it through is letting chance decide.

The first figure operates even without your asking for it. Ley 258 de 1996 established the afectación a vivienda familiar: it falls on property acquired in its entirety by one or both spouses and intended as the family's dwelling (article 1, as amended by Ley 854 de 2003), and for homes acquired after it came into force it operates by operation of law (article 2). Its central effect is the joint signature required by article 3: the property may be transferred or encumbered only with the free consent of both spouses, expressed by their signature. Article 12 extends the regime to permanent partners with a union of at least two years. The protection is enforceable against third parties from the moment it is annotated on the folio de matrícula, the land registry folio (article 5), and it may be lifted by mutual agreement through a registered deed or, in specified cases, by a court decision (article 4).

The second figure is voluntary and more robust against creditors: the patrimonio de familia under Ley 70 de 1931 that we met in moment two. To constitute it, article 3 —with the value updated by Ley 495 de 1999— requires full ownership of the property, that it not be held in undivided co-ownership with another person, that it be free of any mortgage, censo or anticresis, and that its value at the time of constitution not exceed two hundred fifty monthly minimum wages. The two figures resemble each other but are not the same: one limits disposal of the asset (joint signature), the other places it beyond attachment; their requirements and the ways of lifting them differ, and they can coexist over the same property. The full comparison, with its advantages and limits, is in the unattachable patrimonio de familia.

And the "when"? Both figures deploy their full force when they are created together with the purchase: no later creditor will be able to claim surprise, because they contracted knowing —the registry is public— that the home was protected. Constituted years later, when the debts were already pressing, they are exposed: article 4 of Ley 258 allows the judge to lift the afectación (the family-home designation) at the request of a defrauded third party, and a late patrimonio de familia (the unattachable family homestead) can be challenged through the acción pauliana (the creditors' fraudulent-conveyance action) like any other act to the detriment of creditors. The same deed protects or gets in the way depending on the date it bears.

It is worth recalling that procedural law already protects a basic subsistence minimum: article 594 of the Código General del Proceso (Colombia's general code of civil procedure) declares exempt from attachment, among other things, the household goods necessary for the family's subsistence, the tools of one's trade and wages within the statutory proportion. But that net is deliberately minimal —it protects the refrigerator, not the house—: the home is safe only if you activate the figures designed for it, and the natural moment is the purchase itself. On everything else that should be reviewed before signing, you will find it useful to read the lawyer in the purchase of a property.

Moment 5: the couple's crisis

The couple's crisis is the moment when the most damage to the estate is done in the least time, and almost always for the same reason: someone decides to "organize" behind the other's back. It is best to begin with the technical side, in order to understand why haste is a poor adviser.

As long as the marriage subsists, the sociedad conyugal (the marital property regime) remains alive and keeps growing. A de facto separation —each one in their own home, lives already apart— does not dissolve it: the grounds in article 1820 of the Código Civil are exhaustive, and falling out of love is not among them. That means that the salary you earn next year, the commercial unit you buy, the profits you receive, will go on being community property (gananciales) for as long as no one formally dissolves the regime. We have seen ten-year de facto separations end in bitter liquidations because of this: everything built during that decade was still common property.

Orderly exits exist, and they are civilized. Dissolution and liquidation by mutual agreement, granted through an escritura pública or notarial deed (article 1820, num. 5), makes it possible to close the financial chapter without touching the marriage bond, subject to the limit already known: it does not prejudice earlier creditors. A court judgment of separation of property, and divorce itself, also dissolve the regime; the overview of that decision is in divorce in Colombia. In the de facto marital union (unión marital de hecho, a Colombian statutory institution; not common-law marriage), the end of cohabitation opens the period for claiming the dissolution and liquidation of the sociedad patrimonial (the property regime of the union), with prescription periods that make it advisable to act promptly.

What should not be done in a crisis is exactly what is done most: emptying accounts, transferring assets to relatives, setting up express companies to "cool off" assets. Beyond the reproach of simulación (the sham transaction) under article 1766, those moves are usually discovered in the liquidation and they poison any possibility of agreement. The professional rule we propose is a sober one: in a crisis, transparency and an inventory; asset protection was built —or not— in moments one to four, and the crisis merely carries out what was decided back then.

Moment 6: inheritance and old age

Talking about one's own succession is uncomfortable; not talking about it costs more. A succession without planning means assets frozen for as long as the proceeding lasts, heirs negotiating while grieving and a distribution decided by default rules that may not match what the owner would have wanted. Organizing during your lifetime defuses most of those conflicts, and Colombian law allows more room than is generally believed.

Since Ley 1934 de 2018 reformed article 1242 of the Código Civil, where there are legitimarios (forced heirs) —descendants or ascendants—, half of the assets makes up the legítima rigurosa, the strict reserved share, which is divided among them; the other half is "the portion of the assets that the testator has been able to dispose of at will". The old cuarta de mejoras (the betterment quarter) disappeared: today you may freely direct half of your estate —rewarding the child who cared for you, protecting a grandchild—, while respecting the forced allocations (asignaciones forzosas) that article 1226 preserves: support owed by law, porción conyugal (the surviving spouse's statutory share) and legítimas. A technically sound will, granted with full legal capacity, is the most underrated tool in Colombian estate planning.

Lifetime gifts are the second route, with two warnings. The first is formal: article 1458 of the Código Civil, as amended by Decreto 1712 de 1989, requires insinuación —notarial authorization by escritura pública— for gifts exceeding fifty monthly minimum wages. The second goes to the substance: a gift is, as a general rule, irrevocable, and a donor who parts with too much is left at the mercy of another person's gratitude, which is a legally weak guarantee. Making a gift can be sensible in order to advance the division; doing so without keeping back what is needed for your own old age is not. There are also mechanisms for ordering the award of the estate during your lifetime with judicial intervention and respect for the legítimas, and whether they are available is best assessed case by case with advice.

The decisive variable at this moment is not the estate: it is capacity. Every succession tool requires full capacity to decide, and wills granted at very advanced ages, or with a cognitive diagnosis in the picture, are the ones most attacked in court by dissatisfied heirs. Planning at sixty, lucid and free of pressure, produces solid acts; improvising at eighty-five, with the family divided, produces annulment lawsuits. While you decide freely, you are the one deciding; when capacity becomes arguable, judges end up deciding. As for professional support on this front, we recommend the importance of a lawyer in succession proceedings.

Moment 7: when the debts or the lawsuits have already arrived

This is the moment when we receive the most inquiries and can offer the least, and professional honesty requires saying it plainly: with overdue obligations, lawsuits already served or cobro coactivo —administrative enforced collection— proceedings under way, the preventive stage is over. Almost everything that was prudent in the earlier moments may here turn out to be unenforceable against third parties, subject to avoidance, or something worse.

The inventory of limits is concrete. The acción pauliana under article 2491 of the Código Civil allows creditors to rescind contracts for value entered into to their detriment where grantor and acquirer knew of the poor state of the debtor's affairs, and gratuitous acts on proof of the debtor's bad faith and of the harm; the action expires in one year counted from the act. If the debtor enters business insolvency, article 74 of Ley 1116 de 2006 (Colombia's Insolvency Act) subjects to the avoidance action (revocatoria) the transfers and encumbrances of the eighteen months preceding the proceeding, the gratuitous acts of the preceding twenty-four months and the bylaw amendments of the previous six months that reduce the estate or alter the liability of the associates, and it rewards the claimant creditor with forty percent of the value recovered. To these are added the spouses' joint and several liability toward creditors whose title predates the registration of a dissolution of the sociedad conyugal (article 1820, num. 5) and the ineffectiveness of simulated counter-deeds (article 1766). Moving assets in this scenario is not only usually futile: it may bring additional consequences, including criminal ones, that make the problem worse.

Does this mean there is nothing to be done? No. It means that what applies is no longer called organizing, but defense, and it is equally legitimate: appearing in the proceeding and raising whatever defenses exist, negotiating realistic payment agreements, turning to the insolvency regimes —business reorganization under Ley 1116, or the regime for the natural person who is not a merchant under the Código General del Proceso—, which exist precisely so that a good-faith debtor may reorder their obligations under judicial protection. Asserting the assets that the law already declares exempt from attachment is also defense, not fraud. The serious debtor is distinguished by facing the problem with the legal tools; the one who sinks, by multiplying it through the concealment of assets.

And there remains the lesson going forward: when the storm passes —because it does pass—, the first thing to do with whatever is left safe is to organize it calmly, so that the next crisis finds the house in order.

Decision table: moment, risk, tool and its limit

The following table sums up the logic of this guide: which risk each moment concentrates, which tool answers to it and —the column almost no one consults in time— when it stops working. Read it as a map of windows that open and close.

What not to do

Experience leaves a short list of mistakes that repeat themselves with astonishing regularity. If this guide spares you even one of them, it will have served its purpose.

• Do not wait for the lawsuit in order to "organize". Everything signed after the risk has materialized is born under suspicion: the pauliana, the revocatoria concursal and the judicial lifting of the protective figures exist for exactly that.
• Do not simulate. Selling on paper to a relative while keeping the use of the asset is not planning: it is an act unenforceable against third parties (C.C. art. 1766) that also hands your estate over to another person's goodwill. A good share of simulación lawsuits are fought between relatives.
• Do not sign guarantees and co-debtor obligations out of inertia. Every personal guarantee punches a hole in the separation of assets that you built with such care. Read them, measure them and negotiate them for what they are: exceptions to your own plan.
• Do not constitute these figures over assets that do not meet the requirements. A patrimonio de familia over a mortgaged property, or over one exceeding 250 minimum wages, is not available; a badly designed deed gives a sense of protection without real protection.
• Do not copy your neighbor's structure. The right combination depends on your civil status, your children, your exposure to risk and your horizon. The figure that saved your colleague may be the one that harms you.
• Do not leave the paperwork half done. These figures are enforceable against third parties only from the moment they are registered: an unregistered deed is an intention, not a protection.

Common myths

"Organizing your estate is a matter for the wealthy". It is the most expensive myth. Modest estates generate conflicts as intense as large ones —sometimes more, because there is less to divide—. And several central tools cost little or nothing: the afectación a vivienda familiar operates by operation of law, the patrimonio de familia is mandatory in vivienda de interés social and a notarial will is a procedure of moderate cost.

"I am already married; there is nothing left to do". False. The capitulaciones are behind you, but the voluntary dissolution of the sociedad conyugal (C.C. art. 1820-5), the patrimonio de familia, the afectación a vivienda familiar and all succession planning remain. What changes is not the possibility of organizing, but the menu available.

"Putting the assets in a relative's name protects me". On the contrary: it exposes you twice. As against your creditors, the act can be challenged for simulación or through the acción pauliana; as against the relative, you are left with no title over what is yours, trusting that the relationship will never change. The courts are full of cases in which it did.

"The SAS shields me against everything". The SAS separates the risk of the business going forward and with respect to the company's debts. It does not cover what you guaranteed personally, it does not absorb the debts you already had and it yields in the face of fraud (Ley 1258 de 2008, art. 42). It is an excellent tool and a terrible alibi.

"In Colombia a will is useless because the law distributes everything". Since 2018 it has been the other way around: where there are forced heirs, half of the estate is freely disposable (C.C. art. 1242, as amended by Ley 1934 de 2018). Whoever dies without a will does not escape the law: they submit to it entirely.

"An unmarried partnership (unión libre) produces no financial effects". After two years of permanent and exclusive cohabitation, the law presumes a sociedad patrimonial between permanent partners (Ley 54 de 1990, art. 2), including in same-sex couples (C-075 de 2007). Not knowing this does not stop it from happening; it only stops you from planning for it.

Checklist: signs that you should organize your estate now

The classic factors —age, state of health, size of the estate and changes in the family— are still good indicators. But the operational sign is more concrete: count how many of these statements describe your current situation.

• You are about to marry, or you are about to reach —or have already reached— two years of cohabitation with your partner.
• A child has been born, you have minor children, or a relative with a disability depends on you financially.
• You are about to sign a significant loan, open a business, or come in as a shareholder or guarantor in a company.
• You have bought or are about to buy a home, or your house has no protective figure constituted over it.
• Your relationship is going through a serious crisis, or there is a de facto separation that has gone unliquidated for years.
• You have passed sixty, or a health diagnosis has made you think about the future of those close to you.
• Your estate has changed scale: you received an inheritance, you sold a company, what you own has appreciated.
• All your assets are in your personal name and mixed with those of the business.
• You have no will and your family is not "by the book": second unions, children from several relationships, hijos de crianza (children raised as one's own in a de facto parental family).
• No one has reviewed your estate structure for more than three years, or the last time was before some relevant change in the law.

A single sign already justifies a consultation. Three or more mean that life is asking you this guide's question in the present tense: the right moment is not a date on the calendar, it is the one you are going through now.

Acting ahead of time is the calmest way to protect those close to you

Organizing the family estate is not a one-day procedure or a luxury of great fortunes: it is a series of small decisions taken at the right moment. Capitulaciones agreed in time, a protective figure constituted together with the purchase of the house, an SAS before the first promissory note, a will granted while lucid. None of those pieces is heroic on its own; together, and in time, they build something that no last-minute move achieves: a family that does not depend on procedural luck to keep what is theirs.

We have also wanted to say, frankly, what the law does not allow: improvising protections when the creditors are already at the door. Knowing this in time is what turns this reading into an advantage. It is never too early to begin; arriving too late, on the other hand, is entirely possible.

If any of these moments describes your current situation, at Cafore Abogados we can examine your case with the rigor it deserves: understanding your family and estate structure, identifying the windows that are still open and designing, together with you, the combination of tools that your moment allows. You can write to us or call us at 313 8411825 to schedule a consultation with our estate and family law team.

Laws and case law cited

• Código Civil, arts. 1771, 1772, 1774 and 1781 — capitulaciones matrimoniales (definition and form), presumption of the sociedad conyugal by the mere fact of marriage, and composition of the community estate. Source
• Código Civil, art. 1766 — simulación: counter-deeds produce no effect against third parties. Source
• Código Civil, art. 1820 (as amended by Ley 1ª de 1976, art. 25) — grounds for dissolution of the sociedad conyugal; num. 5: dissolution by mutual agreement raised to escritura pública, and joint and several liability toward creditors whose title predates the registration. Source
• Código Civil, arts. 2488 and 2491 — the creditors' general security over all the debtor's assets (prenda general) and the acción pauliana (rescission of acts to the detriment of creditors; it expires after one year). Source
• Código Civil, art. 1458 (as amended by Decreto 1712 de 1989) — insinuación notarial for gifts exceeding fifty monthly minimum wages. Source
• Ley 1934 de 2018 (arts. 2 to 4, amending C.C. arts. 1226, 1240 and 1242) — asignaciones forzosas, legitimarios and the new proportion: half legítima rigurosa, half freely disposable. Source
• Ley 54 de 1990, arts. 1 and 2 (as amended by Ley 979 de 2005) — unión marital de hecho and presumption of the sociedad patrimonial after two years of cohabitation. Source
• Ley 70 de 1931, arts. 1, 3 (as amended by Ley 495 de 1999), 21, 22 and 23 — patrimonio de familia inembargable: constitution, requirements (full ownership, no mortgage, up to 250 SMLMV), exemption from attachment and restrictions on disposal. Source
• Ley 9ª de 1989, art. 60 (as amended by Ley 3ª de 1991, art. 38) — mandatory constitution of a patrimonio de familia in sales of vivienda de interés social; attachable only by the financing entity. Source
• Ley 258 de 1996, arts. 1 (as amended by Ley 854 de 2003), 2, 3, 4, 5 and 12 — afectación a vivienda familiar: definition, constitution by operation of law, joint signature, lifting, enforceability through registration and extension to permanent partners. Source
• Ley 1258 de 2008, arts. 1, 27 and 42 — SAS: liability limited to the contribution, the regime governing officers and disregard of the legal personality in cases of fraud. Source
• Ley 1116 de 2006, art. 74 — insolvency avoidance and simulación actions: suspect periods of 18, 24 and 6 months, and a 40% reward for the claimant creditor. Source
• Ley 1564 de 2012 (Código General del Proceso), art. 594 — assets exempt from attachment: the subsistence minimum protected by procedural law. Source
• Corte Constitucional, Sentencia C-075 de 2007 (M.P. Rodrigo Escobar Gil) — the property protection regime of Ley 54 de 1990 also applies to same-sex couples. Source
• Corte Constitucional, Sentencia C-107 de 2017 (M.P. Luis Ernesto Vargas Silva) — the protection of the patrimonio de familia (Ley 70 de 1931, arts. 4 and 5) also covers extended, de facto parental (de crianza) and single-person families. Source