How do I protect my house form a divorce if I am already married?

½: How do I protect my house form a divorce if I am already married?
I am in a very shaky marriage right now. We have talked about filing for divorce at the beginning of next year. In recent weeks however things have taken a turn. We are talking about trying one more time.

Here is the fun part! Last week I received a letter from my landlord that he is not going to renew our lease. Financially I am at a good position to buy a house. However I don’t want to buy a house if my wife is going to end up divorcing me and take it. I also don’t want to sign another 1 or 2 year leases to rent.

So I have to make a decision fast on what to do.

One option is getting a postnuptial contract that would indicate if we devoice the house stays in my possession. The trick would be getting her to sign it.

Another option is to create an LLC Corporation, then buy the house using the LLC Corporation. I don’t think I can have this done in the current time frame.

Well there is my situation, anybody have any suggestions on what I can do?

Answers and Views:

Answer by ogrendle
This is the wrong place to ask that. See a lawyer. The people here spend too much time guessing. This is too important not to have a lawyer.

Answer by stringhead3
Just be honest with your wife let her know that you really don’t won’t to invest in a house with her because you don’t know how things are going to turn out between the two of you. Honesty is the key and less stress

Answer by Amanda H
the LLC corporation idea is a bad one– if you’re using it for your primary residence and nothing else, your wife could try and say you’d done that for fraudulent purposes. Also, to put the home in the LLC’s name, it would have to be on the loan on its own– which means it needs to qualify with all the usual stuff.

Here’s my question. Why do you feel that you, and only you, are entitled to the home? Even if your wife is a stay at home mother, she’s a contributing member of the household. In a divorce, she would deserve 50% of the equity.

EQUITY. That means if you do a 0 down home loan– and thus have 0% equity at closing– then if you divorce in a year and your wife is okay with you living in the house and her moving out, you only owe her the equivalent of 50% of the INCREASE IN VALUE.

So if you go buy a $ 250,000 house today, and on divorce day its worth $ 260,000, you would owe her $ 5,000 to stay in the house alone. Still a good idea. If you moved out, she’d owe YOU 50% of the equity or $ 5,000. No one just “gets” the house as long as the division of assets is 50/50.

Answer by glo_river
With your situation, your kind of inevitably expecting a divorce it seems, why string your spouse along?

Do you have a close family member who can buy the house in their name, and then change the title after the divorce. It has to be somebody you can really really trust though.

Answer by goz1111
best bet as stated above is to talk to a lawyer, many factors will determine what recourse you have. like how long have you been married, where are the funds coming from to buy the house? did you bring separate funds before marriage and kept them separate during marriage etc,

Answer by alanpks4
It’s too late for a prenup. You do that before you are married, that’s why it’s called a “pre nup”.

I would try to find a place to live that we let you go month to month.

There is no way at this time, since you are married and proably share money in some way to buy a house prior to getting a divorce and not have her possiably get some of it.

Also any money you have (like for the house you want to buy) is fair game when it comes to the divorce unless you have something :(like a “pre nup”) in writting.

I would go to a lawyer now. Get any money you have out of any bank etc and put it in a matress.

Generally the only thing she cannot touch in a divorce is 401k and similar retirement savings.

Answer by Paula M
“Financially, you are in a good position to buy….”……sorry, but a more accurate statement would be…..”WE are in a good position to buy…..” she’s entitled to 1/2 the money you use to buy a house……you’d just end up owing her that money in addition to half the value of the house…..DO NOT ADD TO YOUR ASSETS at this time…..

Answer by teran_realtor
It’s a shame how hard people in this country work on their divorces – it’s now to the point where you’re working on you’re “maybe someday, could get divorced..”. If you put half that effort into your marriage, you wouldn’t have to ask this question.

Don’t get a lawyer. Get a marriage counselor. It will cost less dollars. It will produce less stress. It will end up giving you more joy.

Homeowners generally end up wealthier than renters.

Married men generally live longer than divorced men.

The truth is this – The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. It’s greener where you water it.