The Misery of Mortgages and Divorce
Things I Wish I'd Known Before Going Through a Divorce #2
Thanks for your patience as you awaited this post. If you didn’t follow last week, I had planned to publish these as a daily series, but then subsequently got triggered as I walk the final days of my divorce process (read about that here). So now, I’m back with something I still find to be one of the most punishing aspects of divorce: that if you own a home, the mechanics of having someone keep the house and therefore take over the mortgage are well, tricky. And you need to have the right people guiding you through this decision.
We are not often prepared for the fact that if one of you wants to keep the house, you not only have to buy your spouse out of their equity in the house, but YOU’LL PROBABLY HAVE TO REFINANCE. Because if someone comes off the mortgage, the terms of the loan have changed. The lenders will want to make sure you or your spouse can afford the loan payments on their own, which means, yes, an entirely new mortgage.
This is one of the reasons divorce can be so financially devastating for couples. It is not just the money spent on the divorce or the fact that you split all your assets down the middle. Divorce also has financial repercussions like these.