Divorce in an Abysmal Housing Market

Remember when you and your newlywed spouse bought your dream home together in South Florida?  Everything felt like a celebration.  You gleefully closed the hurricane shutters to ride out one storm after another.  You removed dead lizards from the pool deck instead of waiting for your spouse to do it.  You paid the air conditioning bills without complaint.  Those were more innocent times.  So many hurricanes have passed through Florida in recent years that homeowners’ insurance is prohibitively expensive.  Whereas cute little anoles used to sun themselves in your front yard and on your back patio and then scurry away when you approached, enormous iguanas now strut across your property like they own the place.  They can have it, as far as you’re concerned.  Not only did your marriage turn out to be a dud, but your dream home also turned out to be a financial sinkhole.  Divorce in Florida is nothing new; the Sunshine State has long attracted people who were too stuck on themselves to get along with someone else for the long haul.  In more innocent times, though, couples used to fight over which one would get to keep the marital home.  Does anyone remember the epic battle between Phil Collins and his ex-wife Orianne Cevey over their Miami mansion?  If you are getting divorced and neither spouse wants the stress or the financial hassle of keeping the marital home, contact a Boca Raton divorce lawyer.

A Cautionary Tale From the Last Housing Market Crash

In 2009, a Palm Beach mansion was an albatross around the neck of a 50-year-old woman in the process of divorce.  Her estranged husband had bought himself a smaller, less expensive house in West Palm Beach shortly after the couple separated.  The wife, whose income was a fraction of her husband’s, even though she held a master’s degree and was employed full-time, also wanted to move to a less expensive house, since she could not afford to continue the mortgage payments on the marital home.

The court awarded the marital home to the wife and ordered the husband to pay bridge the gap alimony for a year, during which time the wife would presumably sell the house and keep the proceeds.  The trouble was that, in 2009, when the parties got divorced, the housing market was in such bad shape that the wife could expect to get a much lower price than the amount for which the couple had bought the house in better times.  The wife argued that, since the couple had been married for 21 years, she would still need alimony even after receiving a paltry sum for the sale of the marital home, but the court was not convinced.

Contact Schwartz | White About Divorce for Formerly Affluent Couples

A South Florida family law attorney can help you divide your marital property after its value tanked during the final years of your marriage.  Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.

Source:

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16857688582856162818&q=divorce+levine&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2010&as_yhi=2020