# Joint Ownership Of House After Divorce



## rfd1283 (Aug 7, 2019)

*Terms of a divorce are being discussed between myself and my wife. It's pretty amicable and we're pretty close to being in agreement on alimony, child support and the seperation of assetts. The biggest assett is our house. We're both in agreement that we will have Joint ownership* of the house. I was somewhat surprised to find that this is somewhat common. This often appeals to couples that want to keep their children in the family *house* until they finish school. In this arrangement, when the *divorce* happens, the couple become tenants in common, which means they each *own* half the *house*. 

What I have above is pretty simple to understand. Here's my question - Does the mortgage simply get split in half or does the person living in the house pay more? In essense, does the spouse living in the house pay rent? They are getting to live in the house, while the other spouse has to rent or buy elsewhere. So does that spouse have to pay more than half?


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## Lance Mannion (Nov 24, 2020)

Your equity is an investment. Use of the house is like rent. Child support, part of it, is to pay for their housing use.

If the wife stays in the house with the children, part of your child support is to put a roof over their head. Your wife pays to put a roof over her own head and she also pays to put a roof over the children's heads.

The child support you pay should reflect the rent/free rent arrangement for the house.


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## DownByTheRiver (Jul 2, 2020)

You'll have to work that out before an attorney. But that's the reason most people sell the house I think or have the other party buy it or get it in the settlement. I mean do you really want to depend on an x to pay you rent on a house he or she owns.

So the house is really for the children.. are you doing 50/50 joint custody which is the norm now? So won't the kids be staying with you part of the time? If not and she's going to be doing all the child care, that I suppose she might want to charge you for that just like you might want to charge her rent. 

it's kind of messy but you could do an arrangement where you're three and a half days with the kids you move into the house and have your own bedroom and the kids always stay in the house and only the parents leave which means the parents have to have an apartment to go to.. ideally each would want to have their own apartment to go to so they have some privacy.. that way the kids stay put in the parents commute. 
Most people still opt to have the children be the ones who commute to the parents different homes.


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

There is no one way to do this. Talk to your attorney to see what he/she suggests.

It really works out best of she can refinance and give you your equity. Why? Because if you want to buy a home for yourself, the debt on that house will count against you. The alimony and/or child support you pay will also count against you.

When you work our alimony and child support, did you figure in the fact that you will be paying income tax of those funds before you make those payments to your wife? This impacts the amount of money that you can give her for alimony and child support.


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## Diana7 (Apr 19, 2016)

How old are the children? If you can afford it I would think its best for one to buy the other out and the other get their own place. Either that or you sell the house and each buy a smaller one. It depends on the size of the house now. I wouldnt want to be tied to an ex by both owning a home personally unless it was just for a year or two.


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## MJJEAN (Jun 26, 2015)

*If* I were amicably splitting and *if* I were willing to continue to co-own property and share associated liabilities with my STBX then I think I'd average out the rent for comparable houses in the area and ask they pay half that number as their monthly rent in addition to their half of the mortgage as co-owners. They'd be responsible for all utilities. 50/50 on all repairs and maintenance costs.


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## Married but Happy (Aug 13, 2013)

IMO, this is a very bad idea. What if financial circumstances require that the house be sold - especially after the kids are grown - but one of you refuses to cooperate? Even if amicable _now_, that could change! It's practically impossible to sell half a house to someone other than the joint owner. Joint ownership ties your hands and gives control to the other person if they decide to be unreasonable. If you are desperate, they could offer far less than the market price and you'd have little choice but to accept.


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## StarFires (Feb 27, 2018)

The only time I've heard of this is when both parents live in the house with the kids at different times. They each maintain their own residences but live in the joint home periodically with the kids. That way, the kids maintain stability and get to stay in their familiar surroundings while spending visitation time with each parent separately. Rather than the children being the ones bouncing back and forth between residences, the parents do the bouncing. This also justifies each parent being equally responsible for the mortgage, maintenance, and property taxes of the common home. Otherwise, I don't think I understand one person paying for their own living expenses as well as having to pay for a house they don't live in. Moreover, would you pay toward any other residence your ex lives in with the kids? If you and she did not decide to mutually maintain the home, wouldn't you each have to obtain a place to live? Would you consider paying for your house and hers in that scenario? I understand being willing to make the sacrifice for the kids' sake, but I still don't get saddling oneself like that. Anything could happen in the future.

And speaking of anything happening in the future, how will you feel when your wife begins dating? So, what if she moves her boyfriend into the house? It's common for ex spouses to become jealous and start wielding their imagined rights over who their children get exposed to, so they start yelling that they don't want another man/woman around their kids. Out of jealousy, they begin to indignantly employ those control tactics. But you're compounding matters by adding a house you will be helping to pay for into the mix. How will you feel then? If you're the one living in it with the kids, your wife will have the same concerns and probably behave the same as so many people do. She won't like another woman over her kids, and she won't like another woman in her kitchen. I mean, it will literally still be her kitchen. Everything is amicable now but when it comes down to the exes having new partners, the ball game changes completely. If you separate your lives all the way, you still can't avoid problems, but you won't be causing any.

I don't know the legalities of the arrangement you're considering but to answer your question, it seems to me that any house two people own jointly they are equally responsible for. And so, that throws a sticky wrench into the plan when, after a few months or a year, someone's going to start questioning the fairness of the arrangement. Who is paying too much child support, who's not paying enough toward the mortgage, etc. You sit down and calculate the financial viability of a plan, but plans often don't work out the way they did on paper, usually because you can't account for every unforeseeable event.

Moreover, as someone already mentioned, child support is intended to help provide for the children's housing. So what gets offset? Any way you look at it, the child support gets offset because if you pay less toward the mortgage than your ex since you're already paying child, spousal support, and your own residence, then she has to make up the difference, which she wouldn't have to do if she maintained a different place of residence for herself and the kids. And that's pretty much what you're asking. Who pays less and who pays more = misappropriation of child support. And you both would complicit.

Combined with the opposing opinions by other respondents, I really don't see it being a tenable arrangement unless you did it in the way of my first scenario, and that is provided neither of you bring your new SO others to the common residence, which can't possibly last forever or for very long (since I don't know the children's ages). Imagine being unavailable to a new love interest half the time (for how many years?). I'm not sure many new boyfriends or girlfriends would go for that because it leaves too little time to build on and way too many lonely weeks throughout the year.


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## rfd1283 (Aug 7, 2019)

Thank you for the responses. A lot of helpful input. Here are my responses. Some of these responses may clear up a few facts about my situation
1. My kids are in high school. If I was to continue owning the house with my spouse after the divorce it would be for a specified, agreed to in the divorce agreement, period of time. Say 3 to 5 years.
2. Going into debt because of the house/Associated liability. Those are concerns. However, since we're talking a finite amount of time, any hardships that this may create, would be somewhat short lived. There would be a light at the end of the tunnel.
3. Somebody expressed concern saying that alimony and child support has been figured out. Not true, although maybe I inadvertently indicated that. Nothing in final. We're kind of working that out. We're close. I'm not really sure how co-owning a house will effect the other two things. They probably won't effect those other two things . . . unless rent is a factor. 
4. Someone answered by saying 1) rent would be about 50% of what the going rate is for a comparable house rentals, 2) maintenance would be 50-50, 3) utilities would be the sole responsibility of the person living in the house. Whomever said that, thank you! That's exactly the type of info I'm seeking. I know that's all going to be negotiated and attorneys will have to hash out the exact figures. However, that's helpful because it sounds like it's ballpark figures and that's really all I'm looking for right now.


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