St. Charles Divorce Attorney for Martial Home Division

Kane County Divorce Attorney Discusses Pros and Cons of Keeping Your Family Home

Your marital home is likely connected to many happy memories. It may be your first home, your dream home, or the only home your children have ever known. It may be in the perfect location relative to your family, your job, and your children's schools and activities. With all of these factors in play, you may find it very hard to decide what to do with the home after your divorce.

At Goostree Law Group, we understand how strong the connection to your family home can be and how hard it may be for you to make objective and logical decisions about it. Our compassionate attorneys will help you consider the pros and cons, always keeping your best interests at the fore. You may even find it helpful to work with our on-staff divorce coach, who can help you clarify your goals for your post-divorce life and how the home may or may not fit into those plans.

You and your spouse may strongly disagree about the fate of your marital home. For example, one of you may want to keep the home as a stable base for the children, while the other may want to sell it and use their share of the proceeds to purchase a new residence. You may also disagree about what share of the sales proceeds each of you should get based on your relative contributions toward the purchase and upkeep of the home.

Your Goostree Law Group attorney will aim to resolve any disputes over your marital home through skillful negotiation. Each of our attorneys is an accomplished negotiator with an average of 15 years' experience. We have arranged hundreds of divorce settlements, including those involving high-asset families and complex property division, using a variety of creative strategies to help our clients achieve their objectives. Our success is evident in our client testimonials.

Should You Keep or Sell Your Marital Home?

At Goostree Law Group, we seek first to understand your situation and your goals for the outcome of your divorce. You will find our attorneys to be excellent listeners who will offer you well-considered advice about each aspect of your divorce settlement, including the disposition of your marital home.

Your financial situation will play a major role in our recommendations and your decisions regarding your marital home. Our attorneys will carefully scrutinize all of your financial information, including the estimated value of your home, the size of your mortgage, and monthly expenses. We will then look at these figures in the context of your overall income, debts, and assets, both marital and non-marital.

If you are hoping to keep the home, we will guide you through the process of answering several critical questions:

• Can you and your spouse agree on the value of the home? What you think it is worth and what you can realistically get in a quick sale may be thousands of dollars apart. You may want to pay for a professional appraisal to settle this matter.
• Can you and your spouse agree on your respective shares of ownership? An "equitable" division does not necessarily mean that you split the value of the home 50/50. For example, if you provided the 20% down payment out of your premarital assets, and both of you contributed equally to the monthly costs, you might argue that your ownership share should be 60%.
• Can you afford to buy out your spouse's share of the home's current value?
• Will you be able to refinance the mortgage into your name alone?
• Will you have sufficient income—including any child support or maintenance payments—to pay the mortgage, taxes, insurance, and other upkeep expenses of the home?

If you decide to sell the home and split the proceeds, we will conduct a similar analysis. For example, we will look at who will pay the costs of preparing the home for sale and maintaining it while waiting for it to sell. With our help, you can ensure that you will be positioned for financial success after completing the divorce process.

Contact a St. Charles Marital Property Division Lawyer

The attorneys of Goostree Law Group will advocate strongly for your interests in matters of divorce, family law, and criminal defense. We serve clients in the Kane County communities of St. Charles, Campton Hills, Elgin, Geneva, Batavia, North Aurora, Elburn, Kaneville, and LaFox. Contact us in our St. Charles office at 630-584-4800 for a free consultation.