Buying A House While Getting Divorced

In this episode, Jennifer talks about buying a house while navigating a divorce. She explains why a mortgage cannot be approved until a marital separation agreement is finalized. This crucial document defines your financial picture, including assets, debts, and future support payments. Jennifer advises that during this chaotic time, renting temporarily is often the wisest path to gain stability. She also warns against unethical lenders, highlighting risks like mortgage fraud if you rush the process before your divorce is fully settled.

Transcript

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Today, we're gonna talk about buying a house when you're going through a divorce. Getting divorced is incredibly emotional, and in many cases, you're just trying to find stability. We get the calls all the time. Jen, I'm in the middle of a divorce. I gotta get my own place. Help. Okay. Do you have a marital separation agreement? No, no, nothing's been decided yet. We can't do anything. We can't do anything. It's really simple. Here's why. As a lender, it's my job to verify your debt to income, understand your liabilities, and I can't get a clear picture of that if right now you have a financial world that's all tied together and messy. And if you go, well, wait, Jen, we've always kept our bills separate. Okay, that doesn't mean that they're not gonna have a right to your income. That doesn't mean that if you have children, you won't pay child support until there's a marital separation agreement that lays out will you have to pay alimony? Will you have to pay child support of your assets? Maybe right now you have $200,000, but once the divorce is over, maybe you'll have $10. $10. Yeah, guys, I have seen some wild stuff where people get divorced or getting divorced, and everybody gets an attorney, and sometimes the attorneys are just fueling the battles for dollar dollar bills. That's right. Be careful of that. If you're going through a divorce right now, I really want you to be mindful of your attorneys if you have them and what they're encouraging you to do and how much it's costing you. Because spending money or having an attorney, if they're like, well, what's really important to you? And you're like, Well, I know she wants the piano, but I'm gonna take it. Get the piano. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. I'm telling you why. You're gonna pay that attorney more than the cost of the piano. Don't do it. Be very careful there. But as a lender, that's why we need to wait until in many states the marital separation agreement is finalized. That shows us who gets what, what you end up with, as well as if anyone is gonna be touching your income or if you're gonna be getting some additional income. And in community property states, with many loans, we need the divorce to be final. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and here's the thing that I would encourage you to think about as well. Especially if you're sitting there right now going, oh, the lenders are against me. We're not against you. Look, divorce is chaotic. You we don't know what the math is until you're done. And you're not in a super stable place right now. No matter how stable you feel, I'm telling you right now, you are not in a super stable place. The best thing you can do, if you have to leave the house you're currently in, temporarily rent. Temporarily rent until you get your feet back on the floor, you know what your world is gonna look at look like, because then at that point you can make a good decision about your future. With all the balls in the air, you can't. And the reason I say this is because there's lenders that are just sleazy and they don't care about their licenses and they don't care about the clients, and they'll be like, well, just pretend you're still married. No, don't pretend anything, okay? Because the bottom line is that if you pretend you're still married, there's certain states where your spouse has to sign and the spouse won't sign and they'll extort you and you'll lose your earnest money. There's also states where maybe the spouse doesn't have to sign, you close on the house because you pretended you were married, well, you just committed mortgage fraud. And what if, let's say, you were making $10,000 a month when you closed on the house, but guess what? You've got child support now of $2,000 a month. Your ex somehow got alimony even though they said they never wanted any. And suddenly your $10,000 a month that you used to get is now five. Okay? So please, guys, if another lender is telling you, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. They don't care about you, they don't care about their future, they just care about their paycheck. I'm here to tell you right now, get through the divorce. I know it sucks, guys. I've been there, and that's why I said you're not stable right now. I look back and when I when I was getting divorced, I thought I was super stable. I was somewhere else. I was somewhere else. You're just not all there. So make sure you get all that math put together. Start envisioning your new world. It's okay to rent while you get through these steps. I promise it'll be better for your long term future. Thanks for watching.