Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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I'll throw out first that DW had a bankruptcy maybe a year before we got married. Will explain why many things are just financed under me.
House was purchased by me over 2 years before getting married (I had thought previously it was just a year), with my father cosigning and inputting $15,000 into the deal with my agreement to pay him back with monthly payments. It was a new construction house in a new subdivision, but I got it at a pretty good price because the builder was wanting to move it. Two story house for about $117,000 minus the $15,000 from my dad. Equity loan taken out after marriage currently has about $14,800 debt on it. House has a market value of roughly $180,000 I would estimate, based on the info at the time of the equity loan and comparison of other houses in the neighborhood. Has about $98,000 left on the princ plus the equity loan, plus what I owe my dad, which is still about $10,000.
Two cars, both under my name on the loan only. One is 3 years old with 2 years and about $11,000 left to pay on it. Other is less than a year old with over 4 years left to pay on it at about the same $11,000 left to pay. Both are in very good condition.
Credit cards probably have around $15,000 total debt on them, much related to her expenses, but also various other expenses as well. Majority of it is on card listed with my name only on it.
Everything else would be variable. Have a decent bedroom set in our room, but rest of our furniture is only decent to tolerable. Two old TV's and one digital TV that is not very big. Decent computer that is a couple years old. Washer/dryer, microwave, fridge...round out the higher value stuff. Everything else would just start whittling down the various crap we have. We don't have much of anything of any major value. Just assorted and various things laying around. Nothing I couldn't live without or would mind still having, either way.
We both have 401k accounts, hers at her previous work before disability, mine at my current work, both are about the same amount and not much at roughly $4,000 or so.
Bank accounts will be slimmed down in the next day or two as I drain one to pay for property taxes. After that, mere crumbs left. Total left of all combined might be a few thousand at best.
Hopefully, that covers what you were looking for...
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 4674
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I'm assuming you put nothing other than your dad's loan down on the house? If so, it looks like it was mostly paid for by funds earned during the marriage. In a community property state, that kind of automatically means that the house belongs to both of you. As well as the other property.
To keep the house in a community property state, you'd have to pay her for her half of the equity, probably taking out a new loan to cover it all.
On the cars, it's not so important that there's $11000 loans on them as it is what they're worth. If one is upside down by a thousand & the other is worth $3000 after you pay off teh loan, then when you put this stuff on a ledger to divide it, the one who gets the upside down car will get the other to pay them... I think it ends up being $2000 (that's the $1500 for half the "equity" of the $3000 car, plus $500 for the privelege of having the other take teh upside down car.)
If I were you, I'd offer to take the house, take out a mortgage for her half of the marital estate less 10% of the price of the house (for costs of sale), give her the more expensive car and thereby reducing the amount that you owe to her for the house/property overall.
You'll have to split up the furniture & stuff.
Technically, parts of your retirements, 401Ks & etc that are earned during the marriage are your joint property & parts earned before the marriage are separate, so technically, she may deserve a big part of yours and you may deserve less of hers since she's been disabled for so long... but since it's not a huge number, it's not worth arguing too hard over... just remember that if she gives your entire retirement account to you and wants to keep hers, you're probably out ahead of the game... but if she wants part of yours, make her pay the price of a qualified domestic relations order to make that happen. She may decide not to do it once she realizes the price of getting it to happen is almost the same as the value of what she would get from it.
i'm not ignoring that you may have just gotten a big blow in knowign that your house might not be yours... so let me say this... you are NOT in a community property state. I dont' know of any midwest states which go with the community property laws. I don't know exactly what your state's law will say about these issues, but I've given you waht the community property general picture would be... so you'll ahve to go to a lawyer & see if your state might have laws which help you prevent this from happening.
In a community property state, the idea is that the marriage is an equal partnership with both partners contributing equally, if one is sitting home & the other is earning money, they dont' much care and aren't going to go through any calculations of how much it was wroth to the family that the one who sat at home also was doing dishes or whatever... they're just going to call it equal and if you didn't think it WAS, then you shouldn't have stayed married for so long OR you should have just accepted that you were GIVING AWAY your efforts at life to this person. But you dont' get to get out o fgiving them half of everything earned during the marriage unless they were really BAD & did something like gamble it away.
But you'll wnat to take these ideas & take them to a lawyer & see if your state's laws might be a little easier on you than the community property laws. There are some guys on ehre who think the community property laws are the worst things that ever happened to MAN kind. So check. I'm willing to bet that the bottom line results of your own laws are not so terribly different, but I'm dying to find out for sure.
Do not delay, as I've said before, a marriage as long as yours is on the verge of ... well, the principle that you are giving her stuff by letting her stay married to you... it becomes more & more important in the alimony realm when the marriage is longer and she's been earning next to nothign for a lot of that time... with your ex, earning next to nothing, being on disability, you want to make certain you ditch the marriage before the law starts calling her a poor, dependent woman who YOU MADE dependent by allowing her to be this way for so long.
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Samsung
Platinum
Reged: 06/14/07
Posts: 1966
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Do you have an attorney yet? Since she has custody of one child already, judges are extremely reluctant to separate siblings. Regardless of psychiatic problems, you would have to provide overwhelming evidence she is a threat to the child's well being. It will probably need to be powerful enough, where the state is actually taking the other child away at the same time. Plus, with you being the primary wage-earner, and her at home, it will be a tremendous uphill battle, as she will be the presumed primary parent. Illinois also uses the presumption that kids should live primarily with one parent, thus they will not award shared parenting if you have a custody battle. What is your wife's view on this? Is she voluntarily willing to give up custody? Direct negotiation is going to be your best bet. Gigi gave you a breakdown of how things will be split in the property settlement in the previous post, and it appears very accurate.
Edited by Samsung (06/27/07 06:31 AM)
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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No, I do not have an attorney yet. Things have been pretty hectic, both at home and at work, plus she just got out of the hospital yesterday, so we're dealing with that. With regards to the other child, he is entering his senior year of high school, so a year from now he will be looking at going off to college anyway. Maybe waiting until then would be better? What she is voluntarily willing to do is unknown, as her attitude and moods towards everything tend to fluctuate. All of this is very interesting, and most likely saving me some lawyer time, either by answering questions or giving me thinking points to bring up if I should talk to a lawyer, and thereby probably shortening the amount of time I would have to spend talking to one. Appreciate your replies and PM's.
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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Although, I would think...and hope...that events like the most recent, where she went from being coherent and alert to visual and auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideations within a span of about 2 hours would be considered a hazard to any child's well being.
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mell1213
New
Reged: 07/07/07
Posts: 3
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Hopefully I read your post wrong. You're asking about money and IF you get your SON. I know it takes money to live but the LOVE MUST COME FIRST!!! Please don't put that child it the middle. I'm sure you're angry and hurt but as a parent, we must get over it.
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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You'll have to be more specific about which post you're talking about and which part of that post. If you're talking about the original post, this forum is about alimony and support, so I asked a question directly dealing with that aspect of my situation. I have other threads/posts in other forums dealing with issues like custody of my son. I don't put my son in the middle of anything. His well being has been my priority from the beginning and continues to be so. Some people have said, "you should do this or that right now!", but sometimes that just isn't feasible. My son continues to be in good care, my wife continues on with her treatments and seems to be making some positive breakthroughs, and I will continue my vigilance over the whole situation. The questions I ask here are for me to collect information and increase my knowledge base so that if one day I decide that things are at a point that I need to do something, I'm not starting at square one in gathering this information. I have tried to make my questions specific to the forums that they're in, hence the questions about money in this forum. It's difficult to split things up in the different forums as the issue of divorce impacts so many things simultaneously.
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