Your home, your mortgage and your divorce

If you and your spouse own a home together and now are facing a divorce, you will need to understand how to deal with your home. The decision about keeping or selling a home may be made based on multiple factors, including if you own the home jointly and if you have a joint mortgage.

Your bank and your joint mortgage

As explained by Bankrate, if you and your spouse have a joint mortgage on your home and one of you wants to remain in the house after your divorce is final, you will need to address your mortgage. While some lenders may allow you to convert a joint mortgage to a solo mortgage, many may not. In these instances, it is not prudent to allow a joint mortgage to remain intact even if your divorce decree stipulates that only one person is responsible to make payments.

From the bank’s perspective, if your name is on the loan, you may be pursued for repayment regardless of the terms of any divorce decree. Your credit may also take a hit if payments your former spouse were supposed to make are late or missed if your name is on the loan. For these reasons, if your spouse wants to keep the house, they should obtain a new loan in their name only so you can be properly protected.

This information is not intended to provide legal advice but is instead meant to give important information to divorcing residents in North Carolina about how to be careful when allowing one spouse to keep a marital home after splitting up.