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The what-ifs of keeping the house when you divorce
So it has been decided that wife gets house and husband gets the boat and his retirement money. Wife works for a local firm in middle management with adequate income to keep up the payments (hopefully) that were being made with the benefit of two salaries. (Yes, it will be a little tight).
Question 1. What if the house stays in both names (it will unless you either refinance or sell.)?
So life goes on for the next sixteen months until former wife’s company downsizes and she loses her job. We are in a recession, this is major, it’s darn hard to get another job paying close to what she made, if a job at all. What its coming down to is no choice but for wife to put the house on the market, this down market we are in, and hope she can get out with enough to pay off the mortgage and have a little left to tide herself over. Months go buy, the house is still on the market, without the income, there is no way to make those mortgage payments. Two months late on the mortgage and both names on the mortgage have credit hit it will take up to 24 months to repair. If it goes into foreclosure credit scores of both on the Mortgage will be severely affected and can make it impossible to obtain a conventional mortgage for up to seven years.
If on the other hand, the marital home had been sold and financial settlement had been based upon the net proceeds of that sale, the outcome would have been very different.
This is but one of the many considerations to be made in determining the best solution for both parties in the divorce process in which there is jointly owned marital property.
Posted by: 
Frances Garner
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August 28th, 2010 at 02:27 AM Nice post. Did you just take that real estate and divorce seminar at Vandy? If so, was it worth the steep price?
September 17th, 2010 at 06:05 PM Yes, I did. It was the single most informative seminar I have attended in 32 years of Real Estate.