The Divorce That Could Put Liberty Puzzles in Court's Hands

00 wooden jigsaw puzzle. That is the thing at the center of one of the messiest business fights in Boulder County right now.

Liberty Puzzles is not some anonymous factory. If you have lived here any length of time, you know these puzzles. The artisanal wooden ones with the little figural pieces they call "whimsies." Around a hundred bucks each. People gift them, collect them, do them at the kitchen table over a long weekend and then refuse to break them apart. The company runs that store on Pearl Street Mall and gives tours at its factory on Boulder's east side. Roughly 130 people work there across two facilities in the county. This is a real homegrown Boulder maker, and I mean beloved.

And now it might end up under court control.

How we got here

On July 23, 2026, Sage Wirth filed a lawsuit in Boulder District Court. She is asking Judge J. Chris Larson to appoint a receiver over Liberty Puzzles and its Pearl Street retail operation. In plain English, a receiver is an outsider the court installs to run a company when the owners cannot get along. It is about as serious as an ownership fight gets short of the whole thing folding.

In the filing, Sage wrote that the companies are "plagued by uncertainty in leadership" and show "indicia of mismanagement." Those are not throwaway words. That is the language you use when you want a judge to step in.

So how does a puzzle company get here? You have to go back to the beginning.

A senator's son and a Pueblo bar owner

Chris Wirth and Jeff Eldridge started the company in 2005. It was called Heritage Puzzles at first. Chris Wirth is the son of former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth, so there is a name people around here recognize. Eldridge was a former Pueblo bar owner. The two of them built the whole thing from scratch, opened the Pearl Street shop in 2014, and grew it into the operation it is today.

For years the split was clean. While Chris and Sage Wirth were married, Liberty was co-owned 60 percent by Chris and 40 percent by Eldridge. Two founders, a handshake-era arrangement, everybody rowing the same direction.

Then 2022 happened.

That year, Sage Wirth discovered her husband had carried on an affair. And here is the detail that makes this whole thing so tangled. The affair was with Eldridge's sister-in-law. So the personal betrayal ran straight through the business partnership too. You could not draw it up messier if you tried.

The Wirths divorced in 2023. As part of that settlement, Sage came away with a 20 percent ownership stake in Liberty Puzzles. Not a check, not a buyout. An actual piece of the company. And crucially, the settlement required her consent on major decisions.

So now you have three owners who have to agree, and two of them are the ex-husband and his old business partner, and the third is the ex-wife who found out about the affair. Buckle up.

The Friday check on the desk

Here is where it stops being a divorce story and becomes a business story.

Sage says the three co-owners have failed to agree on an operating agreement since 2023. That is the document that spells out who decides what, how money moves, all of it. Without one, you have three people with legal power and no rulebook.

She also says a distribution check gets left on her desk every Friday, and she believes it may be too small. So her lawsuit is asking the court for a few things. Affirm her 20 percent ownership of both Liberty Puzzles and Liberty Pearl Retail LLC. Order a formal accounting so she can see the actual books. And award damages over what she alleges is fraud and conspiracy.

Her attorney, by the way, is Stan Garnett. If that name sounds familiar, it is because he used to be the Boulder County district attorney. Not a small hire.

The other side is not backing down. Liberty, through lawyer Matt Cooper of Volant Law in Englewood, denies the allegations and says the company "intends to defend the case vigorously."

And Chris Wirth has been blunt about how he sees it. Back in January he called this "a perfect example of the 20% minority owner with minimal business experience tail wagging the dog." That is not exactly a peace offering.

Real money is already walking out the door

Here is the part people miss when they treat this like family drama. It is costing the company deals.

This spring, the dispute reportedly cost Liberty a retail location inside Denver International Airport. Think about that. DIA is one of the busiest airports in the country, and a spot there for a Colorado-made product is close to a golden ticket. Gone, because the owners could not get on the same page.

So this is the real stakes. Not who wronged who in 2022. Whether a 130-person Boulder maker with a legit national brand can keep operating while its three owners fight in front of Judge Larson.

Liberty is still cranking out puzzles on the east side. The Pearl Street store is still open. But the question hanging over all of it now is whether the people running this company will be the founders, the ex-wife, or a court-appointed stranger none of them chose.

For a company built on fitting pieces together, that is a rough irony.