When facing selling your house after or during divorce, there are huge disparities in what should happen, versus what can and often does happen. I believe that a huge part of the problem is that the judges’ decisions don’t take into account the “what ifs?” Right now the “what ifs” have to include the real estate market. Often times the reality of the situation for the home owners, may not be with closure but foreclosure.
Picture a situation where the divorce is final but the property settlement isn’t and the wife is living on a farm with four children. The court dictates that the stay at home mom of almost 25 years, must get a job at $10.00 per hour when she has been out of the job market for 23 years. The judge also states that she must keep the house “show ready” in order to sell the house since it is part of the property settlement. The house in question is a 150 year old, 20 acre horse farm. Since can’t afford to pay anyone to help with the work like had been the case when she was married, she learns how to do everything herself and has to give away some of her beloved horses.
Now she goes from being a very comfortable stay at home mom with a horse farm to a manual laborer. She has to learn how to be a roofer, plumber, how to use a chain saw, how to repair windows, how to work a large tractor to mow files, how to plow snow, muck horse stalls, take care and repair fencing, walls, etc. She is demeaned for being “lazy” because she doesn’t bring in a paycheck and gets some support from her ex-husband. Well guess what? The numbers don’t work. Is similar to the situations where women become stay at home moms because they can’t afford child care.
In this case she would have to pay people to work on the farm and care for the animals, grounds and house, way more money than if she did the work herself. Where would this woman end up if it took about a year and a half until the farm sold? …To be continued.
