Adventures in Filial Piety
If you are mature enough to get married, you know that your in-laws are not going to vanish into thin air, no matter how much you wish that you could have your spouse all to yourself. Some adults maintain close financial ties to their parents even after they reach adulthood, and their spouses know this when they get married, whether they admit it to themselves or not. The stresses of living in a multigenerational household are well-known, especially for people who are related to the multigenerational family by marriage. Your spouse’s relationship with his or her parents can cause tension in your marriage even if you do not live under the same roof with your in-laws. The best way to prevent this problem is with a prenuptial agreement, and the best way to resolve it is with a postnuptial agreement. If it is too late for all of that, and you are determined to get away from your spouse’s family entanglements, contact a Boca Raton divorce lawyer.
New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Build a House While You Are Engaged
Parental involvement in real estate purchases is nothing out of the ordinary, especially in today’s tough economy. Real estate agents have come to fear the Baby Boomer dads of newlyweds, since they often delay closing by quibbling over the price and condition of the property.
Whether your parents like it or not, if your spouse lives in the house with you, at least part of its value is marital property, unless a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement says otherwise. In 2007, a Florida man who was engaged to be married, bought a piece of land, but he transferred ownership of it to his father so that he could get a construction loan. The man then married his fiancée, and a building contractor who was a family friend built the house at a discounted price as a wedding gift; construction began during the couple’s honeymoon.
The couple lived in the house for the duration of their 11-year marriage, and their two children lived there with them from birth. The parties made mortgage payments directly to a mortgage lender. The husband’s father died during the parties’ marriage; he left the house to the husband but the rest of the estate to his wife, the husband’s mother.
When the parties filed for divorce in 2018, they disagreed about whether the house was marital property. They sold the house during the divorce proceedings, so the issue at hand was how to divide the sale proceeds. The trial court sided with the wife, who argued that it was marital property, since the house was built during the marriage and the parties had made mortgage payments to a bank and not to the husband’s father. On appeal, though, the court amended its position to make part of the home’s value nonmarital, since the husband had spent nonmarital funds buying the land and hiring the building contractor.
Contact Schwartz | White About Dividing the Proceeds From the Sale of the Marital Home
A South Florida family law attorney can help you get a fair share of the sale proceeds from the marital home that you sold during your divorce. Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.
Source:
scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12134225681227306016&q=divorce+affair&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2015&as_yhi=2025
