If you get divorced, you have to determine what to do with your home. This can be complicated because it’s a major asset, and it can also be difficult for sentimental reasons.
The good news is that you have three different options you can utilize in most cases. Let’s break down how they work below.
1. Keeping the home together
We will start with this because it is rather uncommon, but some couples do find reasons to continue owning a home together, even though they’ve gotten divorced. For instance, maybe they share custody and don’t want to make the children move, so they are going to keep the house until the children graduate from high school and go to college.
2. Selling the house entirely
The most common thing to do, however, is just to sell the house on the market. If your house is worth more than what you owe, then the two of you can just divide the money that you’ve earned in the sale. This keeps things easy and it can be nice because the money you earn makes a nice down payment on another home.
3. Buying half of the home
Finally, you do have a choice to buy half of the home that your spouse owns. You can sometimes do this by refinancing and using the money from a mortgage loan. They may also accept different assets that you can give up in order to get 100% of the home during property division. Just make sure you think about the cost of homeownership and what will be affordable on your post-divorce budget.
As you work through this process, carefully consider all of your options. Experienced legal guidance may help you decide.