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How To Keep The Marital Home During Your Divorce

10 January 2018

Deann Miles

Keeping the marital home during divorce may or may not be up to you. Here are a few measures to adopt if you want to keep the home:

Work It Out With Your Spouse

The best way to get anything in a divorce, and not only your marital home, is to work it out with your spouse. This is because, in a negotiation with your partner, you can each give and take a few points and end up with a mutually agreeable decision. This is different from letting the court rule on your issues because the legal determination may not be necessarily the best one for both of you. Therefore, if you want to keep your marital home, make it one of the negotiation agendas.

Buy Out Your Spouse

If the court decides to give the marital home to the both of you, which is an entirely probable determination, you can still keep it if you can buy out your spouse. If you have decided to take this route, then the house will need to be valued by an independent professional so that you can give your partner a fair amount for their portion of the house. Make sure you can afford to keep the house before taking this route; otherwise, you can end up with a house you can't maintain and no other assets.

Give Up Other Assets

The way asset division works is that you don't have to divide each and every asset; that kind of literal property division can't work with properties that can't be easily divided such as houses. However, you can appraise the house plus other marital assets so that you can divide them in such a way that you end up with your exact shares (in value), even if you each have different assets. Note that you will likely have to give up considerable assets to keep the whole marital home to yourself.

Convince the Judge the Property Isn't a Burden

If the issue ends up in court and you really want to keep the home, then you may need to convince the judge that keeping the property will not present a financial burden to you. This is because, in most states, the judge has to make a decision that is the best for your situations. Therefore, if the judge thinks that the keeping the house will make you destitute (and by extension, the kids), you will have to convince them otherwise if you want a realistic shot at keeping the house.

Contact a divorce attorney for additional advice.

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