Divorced Couple Disagrees on Whether They Need a Real Estate Agent to Sell Their Marital Home
If you and your spouse agree on when to invest your own labor in something and when to spend money paying someone else to do it, you have saved yourselves a lot of discord. For example, you might be willing to pay a cleaning service to clean your house every week, but your spouse insists that she will do all the cleaning by herself, and therefore, she is constantly stressed out about cleanliness and is constantly fussing at the children to help her with household chores. Likewise, you might be willing to spring for the cost of replacing your hardwood floors, and you might even be willing to take out a home equity loan and pay licensed contractors to do it, but your spouse insists that he and his brother can do it at a fraction of the cost, and now your floor has been torn up for your months, entire rooms of your house impassable, and your brother-in-law comes over every weekend and plays video games until the time has passed for a day’s work on the flooring project. Likewise, if you and your spouse get divorced, you save yourselves a lot of conflict if you can agree on which spouse, if any, should keep the marital home. Even if you agree on that, your marital settlement agreement (MSA) should specify the procedure for disposition of the marital home in detail. To find out more about selling or refinancing your marital home, contact a Boca Raton divorce lawyer.
Your Marital Settlement Agreement Can Never Be Too Specific
In its most basic form, an MSA outlines which of the marital assets and which of the marital debts will belong to which spouse when the divorce becomes final. When divorce mediation is successful, the couple presents a completed MSA to the judge, and the judge signs the MSA, finalizing the divorce. If one spouse keeps the house, she must refinance the mortgage in her name alone, and she must pay her ex-spouse an equalizing payment, unless the MSA awards him enough valuable marital property that he does not need the money from the cash out refinance.
One couple learned the hard way that, even if the parties agree that they will sell the house and divide the proceeds according to the scheme outlined in the MSA, they can never be too specific about the details of the sale process. They agreed in their MSA that they would sell the house, but then the ex-husband listed the house as for sale by owner; his rationale was that he wanted to save money by not hiring a real estate agent. The ex-wife wanted to hire a real estate agent, and a judge had to resolve the matter.
Contact Schwartz | White About Disputes Over Sale of the Former Marital Home
A South Florida family law attorney can help you work out ambiguous details in your marital settlement agreement. Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.
Source:
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