As you go through a divorce, you need to determine what to do with all of your assets. Perhaps you don’t have children, so you’re not worried about parenting time and custody situations. Everything revolves around your assets, and the home is your largest asset.
As such, what you do with it is very important. Below are three of the main options that you have.
One of you can keep the house
It is possible for one person to keep the house and the other one to relinquish their claim. Since you both owned the house, though, the person who keeps it may have to buy out the other person’s share, either with cash or with other assets from the marriage. Additionally, the person who keeps the house is likely going to need to refinance their mortgage to put it in their name and not in a joint account shared by both of them.
You can sell the house
Clearly, you can also just sell your house. This is the easiest way to divide up the equity in the home. Once the sale goes through, the two of you can divide whatever you earned in that sale, and the whole situation is behind you. This can also be beneficial not just because it’s easy, but because it gives you a significant amount of money to use as a down payment on your own house. Many couples like this plan, because they know that they are both going to go out and buy a home immediately after the divorce.
You can both keep the house
There are rare situations in which two people want to keep the house together even after they divorce. The most common is when they have children and they don’t want to make the children move, but that doesn’t apply to you if you’re not parents. One way that this may happen, however, is if you believe that the value of the house is going to increase in the future. You may want to keep it together for the next year or two and then sell it when the value is high so that you can both benefit. This will take some cooperation, but you’re not legally obligated to sell the house. You can simply keep it on the mortgage that you had when you were married.
Getting divorced can be complicated, and you want to make sure that you get your fair share. Always make sure that you know about the legal options at your disposal.