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The house value is somethign different from the rest of the things you've talked about. It depends upon when you bought it, what it was worth when you did, etc., etc... There are several things that all fit together, but which are apples & oranges & can't be discussed at the same time. Alimony. This is whether or not she deserves part of your earnings, mostly with the reason being that she can't support herself without it. CUstody, parenting time & other parenting issues. This is supposed to be based upon the best interests of the child (though we all know this is sometimes loosely interpreted or handled in a real biased way). Child support. This is supposed to be according to a formula based upon your income, hers, how much time each of you has with the child, etc. It's supposed to be entirely separate from the issue of parenting time, but there are people who actually try to manipulate the parenting time to make a better support arrangement... not in the best interests of the children but to work loopholes in the system for the benefit of their own personal budget. Property settlement: usually the most financially significant decision being made, if people own houses, cars & have credit, debt, pension plans, etc. This property settlement will be separate from everything else, but most of the state laws about alimony (spousal maintenance) will say that it shoudl take into account whether the property settlement leaves the receiving spouse with enough resources to provide for themselves without needing alimony, in which case someone can use the property settlement to mess with the alimony... and often the person who gets the house will also get the kids... so that is also an area where the two intersect. Otherwise, these things are supposed to remain separate from the otehr major areas of the divorce. For the property settlement figure out ALL of your assets & ALl of your debts. Houses, cars, IRAs, bank accounts, clothing, silver, china, ... etc... use a separate ledger tfor the smaller personal things that would be nearly worthless at a garage sale, and tehn look at the larger things to see who shoudl get what. It will depend upon when you acquired each item, what was used to pay for it, etc., etc. Usually if you take one of the larger items, like the house, you wil have to pay the other person for their half of the value of it, and get a new loan to pay off the old loan plus what you owe them for it. Usually if you get a car, you have to altso take the loan on it. What you generally want to do is make a ledger of assets & debts, see who gets which, and kidn of even things up ... basically similar values on each side of the ledger... separating out, of course, things that are separate property, like stuff you owned before the marriage & inherited things. Tell us what you have, how much it's worth, how you paid for it, etc., and maybe we can help answer some of your questions about whether or nto you'll be able to keep it. It's not a guarantee that you'll get the house, is what i"m saying. |