Attorney-Fee Clauses in Colorado Leases: What's Enforceable

Buried in most Colorado leases is a line that reads something like this: “In any dispute, the tenant shall pay the landlord’s attorney fees and court costs.” It sounds ordinary, and it sounds final — as if losing a disagreement with your landlord means paying for both sides’ lawyers. But what a lease says on this point and what a Colorado court will actually enforce are two different things.

This is one of the clauses worth slowing down on, because the wording is often written to sound more one-sided than the law allows. Knowing the rule doesn’t make you a lawyer — it just helps you read the clause with clear eyes.

This is educational, not legal advice. The details of your situation matter, and rules change. But the general framework here is stable enough to be useful before you sign.

The default rule: everyone pays their own lawyer

Start with the baseline. Colorado generally follows what’s called the “American Rule” — each side pays its own attorney fees, win or lose, unless a contract or a statute says otherwise. There’s no automatic “loser pays” in most disputes.

A lease is a contract, so a lease can change that default by adding a fee-shifting clause. That’s exactly why the clause exists: it’s the landlord’s attempt to move away from the American Rule and put the cost of a fight on the tenant. The question is how far Colorado law lets that clause go.

Why “tenant pays the landlord’s fees” often doesn’t hold up

Here’s the key point. Under C.R.S. 38-12-801, a residential rental agreement can’t contain a one-way fee-shifting clause — one that awards attorney fees and court costs to only one party. Any fee-shifting clause in the lease has to award fees to the prevailing party, whichever side actually wins.

So a clause that says only the tenant pays the landlord’s legal costs is generally not enforceable as written. The protection cuts both ways or not at all. In practice that means two things worth understanding:

• If the lease shifts fees only to the landlord’s benefit, that one-sided version isn’t what Colorado law backs.
• If a fee-shifting clause applies at all, it has to run to whoever prevails — which means a tenant who wins could be on the other side of it.

That second point matters. Fee-shifting isn’t automatically in your favor just because the one-sided version is unenforceable; it’s that the balanced version is what the law contemplates.

Ask this: Does the fee clause make only the tenant pay — or does it say the prevailing party recovers fees?

What the clause can quietly discourage

An unenforceable clause isn’t always harmless. A tenant who reads “you’ll pay all my legal fees” may decide a dispute isn’t worth raising at all — over a wrongly withheld deposit, a repair that never happened, or a fee that shouldn’t have been charged. The clause does its work by discouraging you, not by winning in court.

That’s the real reason to spot it early. If you know the one-sided version likely won’t hold, you’re in a very different position when you decide whether to push back on a charge or a withheld deposit.

Ask this: Is this clause making me hesitate to raise a legitimate concern — and would it actually survive if tested?

How this fits with the other “waiver” clauses

Attorney-fee terms tend to sit near a small family of clauses that all try to tilt a future dispute toward the landlord. Jury-trial waivers are a close cousin — Colorado also limits those in residential leases, with a narrow exception for eviction hearings. If your lease stacks a one-sided fee clause next to a jury-trial waiver and a “you pay all costs” catch-all, that’s a pattern worth reading closely rather than skimming past. For a walkthrough of the waiver side, see jury-trial waivers in Colorado leases.

The broader point is the one from the pillar guide: a landlord can print almost anything, but printing it doesn’t make it enforceable. For the full map of clauses Colorado law can limit, start with is this lease clause legal in Colorado?.

What to do before you sign

You don’t need to rewrite the lease. You just need to see the clause for what it is:

• Find the attorney-fee language — it’s often near the end, grouped with “default,” “remedies,” or “legal costs.”
• Check whether it names the prevailing party or only the landlord. A one-sided version is the flag.
• If it’s one-sided, you can ask for it to be made mutual, or simply sign knowing the lopsided version likely won’t be enforced as written.

None of this guarantees how a specific dispute plays out. But it changes the clause from something that quietly discourages you into something you understand.

The bottom line

A “tenant pays the landlord’s attorney fees” clause is one of the most common terms that sounds ironclad and often isn’t. Colorado’s default is that each side pays its own way, and when a lease shifts fees at all, C.R.S. 38-12-801 requires it to run to the prevailing party — not to the landlord alone. Spotting that before you sign is the difference between feeling trapped by the language and reading it with clear eyes.

If you’d rather have the whole lease read for you, a plain-English Lease Risk Report turns your lease into a short list of clauses worth a closer look — including one-sided fee terms — and the questions to ask before you sign.

LeaseCheck is an educational lease-risk screening tool. It is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Colorado rental laws change; confirm specifics for your situation.