Your first thought might have been that maybe the court wouldn’t want you to sell the 
house until your finances are resolved. On the contrary. If you don’t have children and neither of you can afford the house individually, it might be easier for everyone involved to sell the house so that you can split the proceeds easily.
During the course of your divorce, you may find that there are certain advantages to doing so on a number of levels related to you and your case. First off, cash is likely hard to come by both for you and your spouse while the divorce is ongoing. As such, adding a little bit of money to your bank accounts could be a welcome relief in the midst of spending a fair amount of money on the divorce between legal fees, court costs and the like. Also, since your divorce will be coming to a close sooner rather than later you may choose to take the equity you gain from the sale and apply it towards a debt or towards the down payment on a new home.
Suppose that you have a large amount of debt elsewhere in your life. Maybe you opened up a business and financed the opening through making purchases on a credit card. If you were to sell the house during the divorce you would pay those debts before the divorce is over with. Your cash award from the home would be limited but you also wouldn’t have any debts to concern yourself with. This can be a great prize to aim for as you close out your divorce.
I think the most practical reason to want to sell your home during the divorce is that neither you nor your spouse can afford to make the mortgage payments on your own once the divorce has been finalized. It is probable that both of your incomes were used when applying for a home loan. The loan was offered to you with the assumption that your spouse’s income would combine with yours to result in a loaned amount that was affordable for your family.
Without the assurance that your spouse’s income would be available to assist in making the monthly mortgage payment it may be the best case for everyone to just sell the house. Even though you may feel compelled to try and make it work on your income for the sake of your kids, you are not doing them any favors by remaining in your home when you cannot afford the payments. Imagine what having to move out of your home under less than desirable circumstances could do as far as harming them from a consistency and stability standpoint.
You need to work out a new budget using only your income before you make a commitment to remain in the house. This budget should have your income at the top, the money taken out of your checks on a monthly basis for health insurance and taxes as well as the current mortgage amount or the amount you anticipate paying towards a mortgage refinanced into your name only.
Selling your home is not something that you should enter into without a great deal of forward thinking and planning. It is not only a huge responsibility to sell a house properly, but a lot of money is also at stake. Not planning where you are going to eat dinner tonight is not a huge deal. You can only “mess up” the situation by a few dollars here or there. However, the failure to plan in regard to selling your home could result in tens of thousands of dollar’s worth of mistakes (or more).
For instance, have you been putting off a key renovation of your home for some time? If so, now would be the time that you need to get that renovation done in order to maximize the value of the home. Contacting contractors, getting bids, obtaining a probable timeline of the work to be performed and then agreeing to all of this with your spouse is just the start of the planning process. Skipping over the details or allowing your spouse to take the lead on the planning could result at necessary steps being missed or incurring unnecessarily high costs when it comes to completing these repairs.
Something that you should consider doing early in your case is discussing these issues with your attorney. He or she will have experience walking people just like you through the decision making process associated with determining whether or not it is in everyone’s best interests to sell the family home during the divorce. If the attorney can work out the details with your spouse’s attorney then it can save you from doing so and experiencing the stresses associated with having this discussion with your spouse directly.
Deciding whether or not to hire a real estate agent to help you sell your home
This can be one of the most important decisions that you make in relation to selling your home during the divorce. Real estate agents do work on commission basis but their expertise in the area of home selling could cause your home to become an even more valuable asset for you and your spouse.
Unlike when selecting an attorney to represent both of you in the divorce, you all are able to select the same realtor to work with when selling the home. You do not each need to hire a realtor. The reason being is that unlike in your divorce, you and your spouse have the same goal in relation the home- getting it sold. Having someone in your corner to rely on for advice and perspective can be incredibly helpful.
The best thing you and your spouse can do before meeting with realtors is to do an informal analysis of the market and determine where you want to begin the asking price for the house and to determine what questions you have. Do not assume that you have all of the issues figured out in regard to subjects like this. Defer to the experts and you are more likely to achieve a successful result.
Steven W. Hair, focuses his practice as a divorce attorney, family law attorney in Clearwater, Palm Harbor, and Safety Harbor.
For more information, visit our website at www.FamilyLawClearwater.com
or call (727) 726-0797.