Alexandra NielDivorce Recovery Coach, ANiel International, LLC. · I help women who held it all together through divorce finally build a life that’s actually theirs | Thrive After Divorce

Divorce & Your Home | What You Need to Know Before You Say “I’m Keeping It”

15 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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1:25

In this segment, the speaker cautions against making an emotionally driven decision to keep the marital home during divorce, especially for women with young children. She explains that retaining the house requires refinancing the mortgage solely in the keeper’s name, which demands sufficient income, a good credit score, and the ability to qualify for a new loan. Additionally, the keeper must be able to buy out the former spouse’s share of the equity without tapping joint assets. The speaker emphasizes that these financial complexities are often overlooked and recommends working with a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA) to fully understand the financial impact of such choices.

Chapters

but we're making that emotional decision, Alex, without understanding all of the financial consequences of that. Sometimes it may be, and I'm going to share this as an example because this is often a very large problem for women, especially with women, women with younger children. Those women typically will say, I'm keeping the house. I absolutely do not want to disrupt my children. I don't want to move them out of their school system, the only home they've known, whatever that story is. But we're emotionally attached to that home. But we're making that emotional decision, Alex, without understanding all of the financial consequences of that. So that means that if you're keeping the home, you're going to have to refinance the mortgage in your name. Do you even qualify? Do you have enough earnings to qualify? Do you have a good enough credit score to qualify? And not, not only that, not only do you have to qualify for getting the mortgage refinanced, you have to be able to afford to buy your spouse out his share of the equity without using any of your joint assets. That's the, the thing that I want to have people understand is that it— you can negotiate those things, but it behooves you to work with a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst who can help you understand what the financial impact is going to be of any of those choices that you make.