California Divorce – Should You Sell Your Home During Divorce

Tim: Well, I’m glad you came out because part of what we do is making sure that the people that come to us have the information and resources available.

We bring up things that they probably don’t even know or something they need to think about. So if you do want to file for Divorce you don’t need to do that.

But they haven’t thought about all the other things that are involved with this.

So selling their home or potential for needing Mediation are all leading to Bankruptcy and all these things can kind of intertwined with.

It’s just depends on what’s going on. I’m so glad to have you as resource for folks who they can call and I can say, ‘Call Conner. Let’s talk about your options.’

You need to find out your appraisal informations and there are lots of stuff that has to go into this in getting the agreements and all that.

So that’s it. I want to talk about the three options. I came up with three, I put three options and then I added a fourth.

So four options–

Connor: Excuse me.

Tim: They can either sell, right? They can refinance.

Connor: Okay.

Tim: They can keep their existing mortgage.

Connor: Right.

Tim: Right? One can kind of stay there and pay the existing mortgage and there’s reasons why they may want to do that.

Well, they can sell it at the later date. So maybe we can talk about each of these options. I kind of do the slide for each one.

So selling your home during Divorce.

Connor: Important with that process is everybody again with each one of these potential outcomes that you’ve described here.

First part, of course, we need mutual agreement by all parties. If the parties can’t get together then we can talk to the party separately or maybe over the telephone together.

But everybody needs to hear what’s going to happen—

Tim: Right.

Connor: …on what the process is going to work. So as far as selling it only takes one signature from one of the parties to start the process.

However, to finish it both parties have to be in agreement. Both parties have to sign everything.

Tim: That’s assuming they’re both on the loan and on title?

Connor: Correct.

Tim: Correct?

Connor: Correct.

Tim: Now what if only one is on title?

Connor: It’s still going to come down to the loan.

Tim: So the loan depends on? So both can be in title if only one’s in the loan that you can sell it with one signature?

Connor: No, you still need both.

Tim: You still need both, either way on top of that —

Connor: We’re going to look on title. That’s going to be the first thing. And I have to correct myself.

I apologize. However, title lender that is going to go contract. Those are the signatures we need.

Tim: Okay, so it’s title, not the loan?

Connor: I apologize, that’s correct.

Tim: Okay.

Connor: Now the other thing and this is interesting whenever you’re in Escrow or you start that process what I show on title could be different than what’s actually there.

And the only way to verify that is pulling something called preliminary title which is what Escrow does.

Tim: Okay.

Connor: They typically don’t do that until you’re a little bit deep into the process because it costs money.

Tim: Right.

Connor: And they want to kind of make sure. But if things change that addendums have to be drawn up establishing the other people that have to be a part of the contract and then they have to be spoken to as well.

Tim: Okay, sometimes selling the home and making that decision is their only option. They can’t refinance.

Maybe they don’t qualify. And that we’ll talk about those in the other slides.

Hopefully, there’s equity. And we had cases where there’s equity. We have cases where there’s no equity.

And they just have to short sale that and they fall into that other options of maybe just having them stay in the home.

It just sometimes it’s not up to their mutual agreement. It’s based upon their circumstances financially or otherwise.