Florida Divorce: Are Your Parents on the Deed?
In a Florida divorce, one of the tasks is to divide your marital property. Many couples starting out have their parents co-sign the mortgage, which often requires that your parents be co-owners of the property. So they're on the deed to your marital home. And now you're getting a divorce.
If your parents are on the deed to the marital home, they are co-owners of the property. In fact, one half is owned by the two of you and one half is owned by your parents. Even if only one parent is on the deed, that parent owns half of the property; it's not one-third each!
Your case could be made more complicated if parents also provided part of the down payment for the marital home as a "loan" with the expectation that someday it would be repaid. Especially if you didn't sign a note for the loan.
What all this means is that your parents must be made parties to your divorce if they're on your deed.
This point of Florida divorce law actually inspired DIY Divorce in Florida. My client's dad was on the deed but not a party to the divorce case. Different interpretations of their homemade settlement agreement arose. And nearly $20,000 in attorney fees and costs and 2 years later, the court finally removed the house provisions from the divorce final judgment because the dad was not a party.
This post illustrates 4 important points:
- Florida divorce law sometimes defies logic
- It's expensive to fix a do-it-yourself mistake
- It's important to find out what the law is before representing yourself in a Florida divorce
- It's far cheaper to get expert advice before you have a final judgment
In fact, it didn't cost you a cent to learn this important point of Florida divorce law. Use the categories to your right to explore other Florida divorce law and procedure topics for your do it yourself Florida divorce case.