Divorce and Property
Divorce and Property
When it comes to splitting assets during a divorce, it’s likely that both you and your partner will have strong opinions about your family home. Our family law solicitors can help you understand your entitlements and work towards an agreement you’re both happy with.
What Will Happen to your Property After Divorce
Unlike possessions such as cars or expensive furniture, working out who should keep the family home can be a lot more complicated. Because of this, it is a lot more likely to end in a disagreement.
Keeping the divorce process on good terms isn’t always easy. If you respect your partner’s wishes and work towards a compromise, you should be able to find a good outcome and avoid going to court.
Who Gets the Property in a Divorce?
Figuring out who should get the house depends on your personal situation. You may want to sell the house and divide the money that’s left. Or one of you may keep living there and buy the other persons’ share from them.
Some people use prenuptial agreements to protect property they bought before they got married. In these situations, their partner is unlikely to have any claim on a property or profits from its sale.
If You Are Not the Legal Owner of the Property
Even if your house is in your partner’s name, you may still have certain home rights.
Contact us straight away and we will help you get your name on the title deeds and register your home rights notice online. This makes sure nothing can happen to the property without you knowing.
If the House Ownership is Shared
The process of dividing the family home becomes a lot more complicated when both you and your spouse are listed on the title deeds. If you are in this situation, we highly recommend seeking tailored advice from our family solicitors.
You may want to arrange a joint tenants’ agreement, which would mean you both own the property equally. This ensures that full ownership would pass to your partner, regardless of their will. Alternatively, you could decide to each own a share in the property. This is known as ‘tenants in common’.
If You Have Children
Where children are involved, agreements have to cover how they will be looked after. That means that one spouse could be allowed to continue living in the property with them until they turn 18.
What couples need, want and are entitled to is different in every divorce we work on. If you would like to discuss your personal situation, get in touch with our team.
If you have children, it is possible that the court will grant the home to the primary caregiver, but this is not always the case. The court tends to make decisions that are in the best interest of any children involved. A big part of this means minimising disruption in their everyday lives.
The Options You and Your Ex Can Consider
Depending on the circumstances of your divorce, you may feel that the best solution is one of the following:
- Sell the house and split the profits
- Keep the house and buy your spouse out of the mortgage
- One party keeps the house, the other receives assets of equal value
Our family law solicitors can negotiate and help you decide what is right, but we will never decide on your behalf.
Letting the Courts Decide
If you and your partner simply cannot agree and you have exhausted all attempts of mediation and negotiation, we can represent you in court.
Our solicitors will present and defend your case to the judge as well as explain what their rulings mean for you. They will also help you to prepare for court and ensure that the process isn’t worrying.
A judge will take the following matters into account when deciding who should keep the family home:
- Your earnings
- How long you’ve been married
- Who your children will be living with, if you have any
- Your role in the marriage
- Your usual standard of living
Avoiding Court
Once an agreement has been made, we will draft it into a financial agreement and send this over to the court. This makes everything outlined in it legally binding.
We do everything we can to keep divorce cases out of court, as we believe the outcome for both parties is almost always better when resolved independently.
We are happy to provide mediation sessions for couples who can’t agree on certain things. Working with a trained mediator makes it much less likely that you will need to go to court.
What We Can Do For You
Our family law solicitors and conveyancing solicitors have a great deal of experience in helping couples get a separation that suits everyone involved.
Whether you want to divorce your partner, or they are divorcing you, we can advise on what to do next. We will communicate directly with the court, your partner and your partner’s solicitor, saving you time and hassle.
