WhatNext
Gold
Reged: 10/11/06
Posts: 159
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[quote]
Did you pay outright for the house or did you put a down payment and get a mortgage?
[/quote]
I payed for the house outright 100% with gift money from my father over a year before we got married. There has never been any mortgage.
Thanks for your reply.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 4674
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OK, "equity" means how much of the house's value do you own, which is a different than the total value of the house if you bought it with a mortgage... it usually means something like this: I put 20% down on a $100,000 house so I had $20,000 equity in it. Then after a year I had paid down the $80,000 mortgage by $1,000 worth, so the mortgage was only a $79,000 debt at that time. If the house was still worth $100,000, then I had $21,000 worth of equity, but if the house was worth $150,000, then I have a $79,000 loan on it, 29 years left to pay on the loan, and $71,000 worth of equity. And THEN you've got an argument to make... let's say you bought the house with your Dad's 20K and then paid the mortgage with joint earnings, there is a REAL question of whether or not the JOINT portion of the house is equal to $1,000 (the amount paid by the marriage), or whether it's equal to $51,000 (the amount of the increase in the value of the equity over the past year), or whether it's equal to something closer to $3,500 (you put in 20K, the marriage put in $1K so the marriage's portion of the property could be called one in 21... use that proportion to figure out how much of the CURRENT equity, or $71,000, is the marriage's proportion...)
You see, it can become a very complicated calculation if people think they're buying a house with thier inheritance & what thery're REALLY doing is buying a down payment and then paying it off with marital property... BUT you don't have that situation. Youv'e got a MUCH simpler situation...
Because you put 100% down on the house, it's 100% sole & separate equity, so there's really nothing she desrves. Have her take the barbecue or whatever back. Or pay her for it, if she insists, but she does not get to get part of the house your Dad bought for you just because she managed to stay married to you for a few years after you got the house!
The fact that you have a house and therefore are able to make ends meet in your current job means you probably won't get alimony even if you asked for it, and she certainly doesn't deserve any. The fact that you lost your job due to something not any fault of your own means that she can't complain that there's less money coming in.
After hearing what you just said, I'm feeling even more secure about telling you that what she's asking for, she won't get...
But like I said, there are never any promises.
Still, it sounds like her demands, IF she dares to push tehm, are being made in bad faith... short term marriage, she makes more than you, and she wants spousal support? BAD FAITH... and she somehow wants you to give her part of the house that your Dad gave you in it's entirety and she had the benefit of living in SCOTT FREE for the past several years? BAAAAAAD faith!
Ask your attorney to put this stuff in a motion for summary judgment on the issues of the home equity and alimony and consider asking for attorney's fees for having had to even answer her demands for this stuff. If she realizes that her claims are so off base that she might have to pay for your lawyer to defend your property against those stupid claims, she might smarten up & stop the battle on these points.
Divorce doesn't have to be like this, so nasty. I don't know why people make it like that. It's not like you two have so much money or assets that either of you could expect to live high on hte hog, and her belief that she deserves something from your Dad's estate is just greedy. Greed is what causes most of the animosity and in situatinos where there's just not that much to get greedy about, it's just nasty for the sake of being nasty.
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MommaMia
Platinum
Reged: 02/17/07
Posts: 376
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I will give you my experience. It is a little different, but there are many similarities.
My ex and I had a house built before we were married. The home was bought with an inheritance from ex's father, 100%. There was no mortgage. By the time we closed, we were married and my name was put on the deed (although my attorney said that didn't matter). The inheritance was from before our marriage, but the house was purchased after for 157k. The utilities were all in m ex's name.
When we divorced 4 years later, the house was worth $265k. According to his lawyer I was entitled to only half of the equity, which using their formula would have been half of the increase in value minus the purchase price. So, the house was worth $265k, minus the $155 purchase price, so I was entitled to half of the 110k difference, which is $55k.
To make a long story short, my attorney argued I was entitled to half of the house outright. We ended up settling out of court. He gave me $83k to buy me out. We both didn't want to take our chances in court.
Now, your ex has a decent claim on the formula used above.
Finally, paying for the cable, he appliances, painting a room, gardening, cooking, cleaning give her some right to the home. I agree not 100%.
Also, I am guessing she used her money for other things in the marriage such as vacations, cars, etc.
Just throwing in my 2 cents.
Good luck.
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WhatNext
Gold
Reged: 10/11/06
Posts: 159
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[quote]OK, "equity" means how much of the house's value do you own, which is a different than the total value of the house if you bought it with a mortgage... it usually means something like this: I put 20% down on a $100,000 house so I had $20,000 equity in it. Then after a year I had paid down the $80,000 mortgage by $1,000 worth, so the mortgage was only a $79,000 debt at that time. If the house was still worth $100,000, then I had $21,000 worth of equity, but if the house was worth $150,000, then I have a $79,000 loan on it, 29 years left to pay on the loan, and $71,000 worth of equity. And THEN you've got an argument to make... let's say you bought the house with your Dad's 20K and then paid the mortgage with joint earnings, there is a REAL question of whether or not the JOINT portion of the house is equal to $1,000 (the amount paid by the marriage), or whether it's equal to $51,000 (the amount of the increase in the value of the equity over the past year), or whether it's equal to something closer to $3,500 (you put in 20K, the marriage put in $1K so the marriage's portion of the property could be called one in 21... use that proportion to figure out how much of the CURRENT equity, or $71,000, is the marriage's proportion...)
You see, it can become a very complicated calculation if people think they're buying a house with thier inheritance & what thery're REALLY doing is buying a down payment and then paying it off with marital property... BUT you don't have that situation. Youv'e got a MUCH simpler situation...
Because you put 100% down on the house, it's 100% sole & separate equity, so there's really nothing she desrves. Have her take the barbecue or whatever back. Or pay her for it, if she insists, but she does not get to get part of the house your Dad bought for you just because she managed to stay married to you for a few years after you got the house!
The fact that you have a house and therefore are able to make ends meet in your current job means you probably won't get alimony even if you asked for it, and she certainly doesn't deserve any. The fact that you lost your job due to something not any fault of your own means that she can't complain that there's less money coming in.
After hearing what you just said, I'm feeling even more secure about telling you that what she's asking for, she won't get...
But like I said, there are never any promises.
Still, it sounds like her demands, IF she dares to push tehm, are being made in bad faith... short term marriage, she makes more than you, and she wants spousal support? BAD FAITH... and she somehow wants you to give her part of the house that your Dad gave you in it's entirety and she had the benefit of living in SCOTT FREE for the past several years? BAAAAAAD faith!
Ask your attorney to put this stuff in a motion for summary judgment on the issues of the home equity and alimony and consider asking for attorney's fees for having had to even answer her demands for this stuff. If she realizes that her claims are so off base that she might have to pay for your lawyer to defend your property against those stupid claims, she might smarten up & stop the battle on these points.
Divorce doesn't have to be like this, so nasty. I don't know why people make it like that. It's not like you two have so much money or assets that either of you could expect to live high on hte hog, and her belief that she deserves something from your Dad's estate is just greedy. Greed is what causes most of the animosity and in situatinos where there's just not that much to get greedy about, it's just nasty for the sake of being nasty. [/quote]
Thank you so much for your advice it really means a lot to me going through this CRAP. I'll let you know how things turn out. I'm going to see my lawyer later this week to fill out some forms about my net worth and show them what my bills are every month.
One of the reasons she is so bitter is a few months after she left me I started dating someone new and it pissed her off. I guess she wanted me to sit around and be miserable but I went on with my life. She had a few bitter divorced friends that did not know the situation and told her to take me for all I am worth when they didn't know how I acquired the house. They figured we had a mortgage and she was on the deed. She bought into what they were telling her and she decided not to try and work things out with me.
I told her while we were still together that these "friends" would give 2 sh!ts about your marriage if things were going great. I told her if you said your marriage was going great the conversation would have lasted about 2min but say things are sh!tty then they are all ears and even calling you back the next day to see if things still suck. They would never be calling her back the next day to see if things were still going great. Of course from what I have heard these 2 or 3 friends don't even talk much to her now. The story is old now and they don't care.
Again thanks for your reply.
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WhatNext
Gold
Reged: 10/11/06
Posts: 159
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[quote]I will give you my experience. It is a little different, but there are many similarities.
My ex and I had a house built before we were married. The home was bought with an inheritance from ex's father, 100%. There was no mortgage. By the time we closed, we were married and my name was put on the deed (although my attorney said that didn't matter). The inheritance was from before our marriage, but the house was purchased after for 157k. The utilities were all in m ex's name.
When we divorced 4 years later, the house was worth $265k. According to his lawyer I was entitled to only half of the equity, which using their formula would have been half of the increase in value minus the purchase price. So, the house was worth $265k, minus the $155 purchase price, so I was entitled to half of the 110k difference, which is $55k.
To make a long story short, my attorney argued I was entitled to half of the house outright. We ended up settling out of court. He gave me $83k to buy me out. We both didn't want to take our chances in court.
Now, your ex has a decent claim on the formula used above.
Finally, paying for the cable, he appliances, painting a room, gardening, cooking, cleaning give her some right to the home. I agree not 100%.
Also, I am guessing she used her money for other things in the marriage such as vacations, cars, etc.
Just throwing in my 2 cents.
Good luck. [/quote]
Thanks for your reply.
What state do you live in?
I think your husband would have won in court if he tried.
No she never paid for any vacations and I paid for my car !00%.
We never had any joint credit cards or bank accounts.
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Samsung
Platinum
Reged: 06/14/07
Posts: 1966
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Wow. I see that as so wrong. My ex and I inherited tens of thousand of dollars in antique furniture and other stuff from her side of the family. When we divorced, even though I was legally entitled to 1/2, I had the attorney take that stuff off the table. It's wasn't mine to be split, regardless of what the law says. I didn't buy it, and contibuted 0 to it.
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WhatNext
Gold
Reged: 10/11/06
Posts: 159
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It's nice to see some people have integrity. But are you sure you would have really be entitled to half of the furniture even though it was something that she inherited? Or was it left to both of you?
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 4674
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I can only figure there may be a state or two which for some bizarre reasons will strip a person of half of the investment value of thier inheritance if they have the audacity to use the inheritance to purchase a home to live in and then allow a spouse to live there... rather than keeping the inheritance in a separate account and allowing interest & investment income to accrue within the account.
NASTY, but I guess there are some states that might do that. None that I know of, though. Most states protect inheritances.
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jbar
Platinum
Reged: 12/16/06
Posts: 970
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===========================================================
From what I have read and what my lawyer has said is a judge will say my house is pre-marital property and she can not touch it. My fear is that somehow a judge will sympathize
with her for some reason and not call my house pre-marital property. Can a judge change the law as he or she sees fit?
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A judge most certainly CAN change the law, as he sees fit, provided that he is an Appeals Court Judge and is upholding the opinion (or "overturning" it) of a lower court. One need look no farther than many well-known Supreme Court cases to see this, if the law is deemed inconsistent with "higher" or "superior" law.
Alternatively, the Appeals Court may "interpret" a lower court's decision in a new manner, theretofore unthought of in the given circumstances and inconsistent with what, to all honest observers, has been the way the law has been interpreted in the past. One has to look no farther than "Murff vs. Murff" in Texas, and compare it to the Texas Family Code, Sec. 2.003., to see what I am talking about. The Family Code calls for a mandated 50/50 division of marital property, yet Murff v. Murff declares that "any number of considerations" may determine the division of such assets, including "the needs of the parties"! As far as I can determine, both of these laws are now, simultaneously, being applied in Texas Family Courts, and the outcome of a given case is determined by which particular version of law the judge likes!
Indeed, there are even states where everything a married person has is considered to belong one-half to his spouse (LOL), whether acquired by inheritance or work prior to marriage, etc., upon operation of the theory that "When you get married, you stop being two people and become one. Therefore, you acquire one-half of everything your spouse has and ever will have". I would just like to know one thing: Is there something about law and politics (with apologies to J.W. Bush) which attracts nincompoops?
All the above is not the real outrage, but rather the fact that who "wins" the divorce apparently depends not on law or even reason, but rather upon which party can pay for the best attorney and the most appeals! You could face a decision clearly in violation of law, but which it could cost you a fortune to reverse, IF YOU CAN. For various political reasons Courts Of Appeals are loath to reverse decisons of lower courts, but lawyers are nonetheless happy to take the money for the appeal.
I think it may have been Lincoln who said, "If a court says that two and two are five, then two and two ARE five, until a higher court reverses the ruling"!
Edited by jbar (09/24/07 07:17 AM)
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Samsung
Platinum
Reged: 06/14/07
Posts: 1966
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My attorney told me I was entitled to 1/2. Whether I was or not I guess is mute. I never took it that far; I couldn't take it. A friend of mine, whose home was completely paid for, remarried a few years ago. She divorced this 2nd, cheating husband about 5 years later, and had to pay 1/2 the increase in value that accrued during that time...and houses increased by the double digits here every year for that time frame. Her house has gone from $135K to $248K, and she had pay him about $56,000. Of course, she was bewildered about it...and she should be. How many people are even aware of such laws? It is all so wrong.
Edited by Samsung (09/24/07 06:58 AM)
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