Deciding where to live during and after a divorce

WASHINGTON — In working with clients going through a divorce, the decision about where to live can be challenging. This can be one of the first decisions to make during divorce proceedings, but is often not considered in advance.

Add to that the very real emotional, practical and often significant financial implications, and there may be confusion about the right course of action. Every situation is unique, and while one route may have worked well for a friend or family member, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be appropriate for you.

At times, the trade-offs required to execute what you want to do are greater than you realize. This is where working with an adviser can be helpful. At the very least, an adviser can guide you in understanding the potential costs and what you may have to give up as you consider your options.

If you don’t have an adviser, or if you’re simply exploring the possibility of divorce, here is a list of things to consider as you analyze your options. We provide six key questions for you to ask before you make a final decision, as well.

In the end, deciding where you will live is really a matter of balancing the emotional, practical and financial implications of the three major options you have — staying in your current home, buying a new home or renting.

Staying in your home

The emotional aspect of having to sell or leave your family home is very real, especially if you have minor children. One of you can avoid moving and other costs, should you or your spouse stay in your home. For that person (and any children), there can be real value gained from keeping one aspect of life certain while so many other things are changing. Another benefit may be the proximity of your neighbors who may lend support during your family’s transition. The challenge here is that it’s difficult to quantify the value of these intangible benefits.

When it comes to the financial considerations of staying in your home, it’s important to have a very detailed list of all the costs including ongoing maintenance, cleaning, taxes and utilities. Major repairs that may be on the near or longer term horizon, such as a new roof or outdoor painting, should be added to the costs when calculating total cash flow required to keep the home. If the mortgage and other expenses are manageable, staying in your home may make this option cheaper than buying a new home or renting. However, this is a function of many factors, not the least of which are current real estate market conditions and how much equity you have in your home.

If you are or your spouse is assuming the mortgage, you’ll also need to consider whether you have the monthly cash flow and the financial capability to qualify for a mortgage. This can be problematic if the spouse staying has little to no reportable income or is receiving alimony that won’t support the cost of the home. In those cases, if there are enough assets, you may be able to obtain an asset-securitized loan. Bear in mind that paying the monthly mortgage does not qualify as an amount toward alimony or child support, so one spouse paying the mortgage on a home occupied by the other would need to be spelled out in a Divorce Agreement.

Continuing to own the home jointly is an option, but carefully consider whether you want to remain attached financially to your future ex, and whether you can depend on them to hold up their end of the bargain by sharing in future post-divorce costs. If a transaction is negotiated between you, you’ll want to review all the financial and tax implications of transitioning ownership. You’ll be negotiating a buyout transaction that will require agreement on price (usually based on one or more appraisals), transaction date, and could have tax implications for one or both parties.

Buying a new home

While many divorcees prefer to stay in their existing home (and may fight hard for that in negotiations), others use this transition period as an opportunity to make a desired change. There can be value in having a chance to live in a new location, or explore a new living style while also being able to “right-size” your home for the future. Under the right real estate market conditions, you also may gain an opportunity to build equity which starts you on a path toward greater wealth.

On the flip side, there are many upfront costs when buying a new home, so you’ll want to be realistic about the impact they have on your financial situation and the total cost of this option. Moving costs may include new furnishings and renovations on the new property, in addition to the transactions costs, such as a down payment and settlement costs, such as home inspections, closing costs, and insurance on the purchase. Remember that cash for these items may be in short supply if joint accounts are frozen, negotiations take longer than expected, or if attorney’s fees are high. These costs turn into sunk costs if you later decide on a different location or change your opinion about your desired lifestyle — a real risk if you’re making this decision in haste or in the midst of other challenges that arise during a divorce.

Just as in the case of assuming a mortgage on your existing home, if you choose to buy a new home you’ll first need to qualify for a mortgage. Check your current credit score and overall debt and income levels, and consider asking a financial institution to prequalify you to confirm how much of a loan you can obtain. Getting financing in the middle of a drawn-out divorce may be harder than you anticipate, especially if you’re starting a new job, or if most of your net worth is tied up either in an illiquid business or in a jointly owned home that is under water or needs to be sold.

Renting

I often recommend renting for a period of time during and after a divorce, mainly because it tends to be a time of high emotion and a lot change — not ideal circumstances for sound decision-making. Finding a temporary location also gives you the time and space to sort out what lifestyle you want post-divorce, and gives you more flexibility to change your mind as your new single life evolves. Depending on the cost, renting may free up cash flow for other priorities, such as starting a retirement account or starting a business. Maintenance emergencies will be someone else’s responsibility and, other than potential rent increases or high utility bills, you’ll likely have fewer surprise expenses as a renter. That can be helpful during the transition from paying bills as a couple to shouldering all the costs on your own.
Renting is also a good option for parents with children in their late teens as they may need or want to stay in a particular neighborhood for schools, but buying in that area may be cost-prohibitive. Although these days it can be difficult to predict whether college-aged children will return home, many times when children are heading off to college in the next three to four years, renting is a good option until they leave the nest.

Once you sort through the pros and cons of these three main options and decide which is best for you, we suggest you double check your decision using these six probing questions:

1. Is the location convenient to my work and social communities?
2. How does this choice meet the needs of my children now and in the next five years?
3. Does the home’s size and layout suit my new single lifestyle?
4. What are the tax implications of the required actions?
5. Have I considered the total costs for each option, including estimates for maintenance and other factors?
6. If I make this choice, what am I giving up in my other financial goals?

When a marriage ends, finding a new home can be one of the most challenging decisions. While there is a lot of advice to help you make a decision, there really is no one right answer for where to live. Consider each of your options by carefully weighing the emotional, practical and financial impact and ask yourself the hard questions. If you do, the chances that your final decision will be right for you are much greater. That’s a decision you can feel good about.

Source: https://wtop.com/business-finance/2018/02/deciding-where-to-live-during-and-after-a-divorce/

How to survive a divorce: find acceptance after falling apart

Amid the pain of a failed marriage, it is impossible to forgive your former partner. But it is possible to come to terms with the split – by admitting you have lost

We were together for 13 years. Some days it feels like I didn’t exist until the day we met. Other times it seems like it never happened.

I thought we had a whole life to spend together. We navigated foreign countries and slept on straw mats while lizards crawled on the ceiling and the ocean heaved and moaned outside. We sat bleary-eyed in emergency rooms at ungodly hours, taking turns holding our sick and wailing infant who would not be comforted. We stood hand in hand at the newly dug graves of parents, weeping and silently holding each other. We talked quietly for hours on couches, emptying bottles of wine and telling of our childhoods, our fears, the little triumphs that made us carry on.

But we also wove lies into the DNA of our relationship. Not maliciously, but childishly. Fearfully. We manipulated and tricked each other because we didn’t know the cost. We memorized each other’s scars and picked at them to to get what we wanted. We abused each other’s trust. We allowed our trust to be abused. We were only afraid of being alone. Of being wrong.

I thought we had a whole life together, but it turns out it was only a couple of chapters. The realization that your marriage is over is so cumbersome, so all-consuming, that your brain can only process it in pieces. You drive past an apartment building and wonder what it would be like to live in a cozy studio there. You stand in the grocery store and imagine how your life would be different if you’d ended up with that woman who is taking forever to pick out a bottle of olive oil. You lie in bed at night so far off in your imagination that you forget that your wife is lying asleep next you. You realize you’re living your life as though she isn’t even there.

You don’t yet know that your marriage is over. These thoughts don’t fully register. They float in and out like small pieces of trash in between chunkier, more graspable thoughts like “we need more eggs” or “I should call someone about the sound the dryer is making”. So when the end finally materializes, it is like finally coming face to face with a horrifying and yet entirely predictable demon. It was in the house the whole time. And once it is freed, it attacks your body in slow motion, the grief of it devouring you seemingly cell by aching cell.

You develop impossible obsessions. Two weeks after my wife left, I was driving our kids to an amusement park and George Jones’s She Thinks I Still Care came on during an NPR interview. I became fixated on learning the chords and playing the song. For six months, I played it compulsively. I sang it in the shower, I serenaded my kids to sleep with it, and woe unto anyone who happened to be in the same room with me and a piano; they’d be treated to the most morose and self-pitying rendition in the history of mankind.

You feel like a failure. You can take struggling at your job, health problems, money challenges. These are all things that you feel you can survive as long as you don’t have to do them alone. But losing your marriage leaves you feeling like you are without purpose, like you have permanently and irrevocably failed at the single most important thing in your life.

You sit comatose in front of your television until the sun sets, only to lie awake at night listening until the silence hurts your ears. You cry until you dry heave. And after that comes the emptiness, both outside and in, that makes you feel how lonely you truly are.

For the first year or so, you keep the relationship going. Not willing to admit it’s truly over, the both of you keep playing the game. You push her buttons, she pushes yours. Your intimate knowledge of one another, the secrets you once whispered in close moments, are now weaponized. You remember years ago, when the two of you were barely in your twenties, you saw a couple fighting on the street. You said: “Why is it so hard for people to let go?” And she said: “Because you can never let someone walk away with all your secrets.” Hearing her say that, you fell in love all over again; her intelligence, her emotional courage, her understanding of what makes our hearts work. Over a decade later, you hate her for those things and how she uses them against you. You hate yourself for how you use them against her.

The reason it is so difficult to have a healthy relationship with the person you’ve divorced is because no matter how well you learn to get along, no matter how thorough and exhaustive the amends that are made, it is impossible to completely forgive someone who has meant this much pain. It is simply too much. It is impossible to completely forgive someone whom you once loved so deeply.

It has been six years since our marriage ended. The pain has not been healed. It has been dulled to the point where it no longer keeps me up at night. We have two children, a teenager and a pre-teen whose lives and struggles and needs are such that the two of us must talk and strategize together every day. We function well. We don’t fight. We don’t say terrible things to our kids about one another. We have dinners and brunches together. We don’t hate each other.

But it is not easy. The cost of this peace and relative civility is this: you have to admit that you have lost. You have to admit that what the two of you tried to do is over. And that it can never be resurrected. You must concede that you will never get what you want from the other person, and you must stop punishing them for that.

You must accept the distance that now exists between the two of you. They no longer belong to you. Your marriage no longer belongs to you. You must forgive them for being the person that they are. You must forgive yourself. The two of you were young. You tried to make a love. You didn’t know how. It could have been different. But it was not. Your very best wasn’t good enough.

To survive divorce, you must find acceptance for this. Even if you can’t ever find forgiveness.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/16/how-to-survive-divorce