Make offer to settle on house
Before I married, my partner and I bought a house as joint tenants. I put down $300,000 and he paid $30,000. We took out a mortgage to pay the balance. We jointly paid the house expenses. We married a year later but separated six months after that. I want to stay in the house. My husband wants half the equity in the house. Is that what you think a judge would order?
No. Paying half the living expenses doesn’t get your partner half the value of the house on a six-month marriage. Assuming the house didn’t go up in value since it was purchased, I believe a judge would order you to pay $30,000 to make your husband’s pocket book whole. But, for example, if the house increased $100,000 in value, then — because your husband paid 10 percent of the money needed to buy the house, he should get 10 percent of that increase, or another $10,000, for a total of $40,000. Based on the relatively small amount your husband paid in, I’ll guess that he doesn’t have a lot of money to fight you in court. At the same time, you don’t want to fight to the last penny. I’d recommend you pay $55,000 to be done with it. A sure settlement is better than letting a stranger — the judge — make a decision that you might not like. Paying now lets you get on with your life.
Because my husband’s work took him to several foreign countries, I never got a chance to pay into Social Security. After living in Virginia for about three years, I left my husband, who still lives there. We signed a separation agreement that was filed in Virginia. Since then, he’s paid me annually $48,000 taxfree alimony. But we never divorced. I now live in Massachusetts and would qualify for Social Security. But I need to prove how much my husband earns. For reasons unknown to me, he refuses to tell me how much he earns, the amount of his annual pension and the results of his multiyear fight with the IRS. Can I file for divorce in Massachusetts and get the court to force him to provide me with the needed data?
Assuming you lived here for a year, you can file your divorce in Massachusetts. Your divorce will be valid everywhere even if your husband doesn’t file his appearance. However, because you never lived here together, Massachusetts does not have jurisdiction over your husband to do more than divorce you unless he files an appearance in your divorce case — which is not likely. You may be able to get the needed discovery in Virginia. So you need to talk with an experienced Virginia divorce lawyer.
Wendy O. Hickey has since 1994 been involved in and since 2003 been a trial lawyer who concentrates her practice on national and international family law. Any legal advice in this column is general in nature, and does not establish a lawyer-client relationship. Send questions to dearwendy@bostonherald.com.