Divorce Support Forums: Community Property, Short term marriage

What you have done is invest in a house that has negative value. When you make an investment that loses value, you lose. Simple as that. Take your income and find someplace else to invest it, becasue if you're looking at this as how much you can get out o fit after less than a year of marriage, it's clear the marriage is not your priority and a few $$ worth of sweat for a year is waht you're looking to get paid for. Unfortunately, because of the way the market is, he is right, you own nothing. You don't get reimbursed for what you put into it, you don't get any value from this investment. You paid part of the mortgage and maintenance and upgrades, and you worked to MAKE the upgrades and maintain the house, and in exchange for that you got a place to live with your husband for less than a year.

It was a bad investment, take it as a lesson learned and don't put all your eggs in one basket next time if you want an investment that increases, be willing to wait long enough for it to increase. Cut your losses and go before it gets hateful and hurtful between the two of you.

The alternative is for you to do what it takes to fix the marriage (with the way you sound, it probably involves CONTINUING to pay a share of living & improving the place) and WAIT, WAIT, WAIT till the marekt increases and hope the increased value will outpace the additional investment that you make on it in the meantime... you would only get the price of half of the increased value of the house if you do wait, even if you spent TONS more money on it in the meantime... it's what they woudl call "throwing good money after bad", meaning that you can't fix stuff like this by putting more money into it... the only thing that will fix this is TIME and hope that the market fluxuations will make it better. and throwing more money at it will only give you less in your pocket at the end of it all. In investment discussions, it's tough for most people to learn how to cut their losses when the market turns bad, and they OFTEN throw good money after bad and follow the market down on a sale (which means overpricing something you're trying ot sell and when it doesn't sell, lowering the price to what FEELS like the market value but it ends up that the market lowers again by the time your new lower price hits the records, and you adjust again, and again and never catch up with lowering your price fast enough to catch up to the market free-fall and actually SELL the house. People who "chase the market down" and keep throwing good money after bad often find themselves paying just to get out of their investments.

I know someone at the beginning of this bad market swing who had bought a house at $400K and 100% financing and were spending at the TOP of thier budget... but then got separated & found out the house was only WORTH like $375K, and between them, they couldn't either on thier own afford to keep the house, rent a place to live in, and raise their new baby. They would have had to sell at a LOSS and bring money to the closing in order to get out of the house in order to get divorced, and they didn't have the money to do it with. The finally agreed to lease the house to a friend for the price of the mortgage... and a promise to let it go as a lease-purchase with zero money back to my firends, if the value of the house raises enough that the friend wants it. My friends were VERY lucky to have friends who wanted thier house as a rental... otherwise, they'd have had to pay $25,000 just to get out of the house (and another several thousand $$ for the realtor fees) and THEN pay their lawyers for the divorce. They were VERY lucky.

You don't have this problem. Your name is not on the house. YOu can walk away from this bad investment and bad marriage if you choose. But if you don't walk away, don't think you're staying in order to get you rmoney back... this is not a good investment...