Speaker 3 (00:00.11)
because we get questions all the time about housing after divorce.
Welcome to the Divorce Queens podcast where real women get real about divorce. I'm Taylor Wins, divorce coach, family law attorney and mom of four.
And I'm Rachel Kennedy, family mediator, parenting consultant, and divorced mom of three. We are here to cut through the noise and bring you the legal, personal, and practical sides of divorce because getting divorced isn't just a legal process, it is a total life transformation.
So whether you're thinking about getting divorced, in the middle of the chaos, or trying to rebuild after it's all over, you're not alone. Grab your coffee, your wine, or your walking shoes, and let's get into it.
All right, welcome. We're super excited to be here today on another episode of the Divorce Queens. We have a very special guest with us, Miss Tina Hagan, who Rachel got to come on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:57.966)
Yeah, yeah, Tina and I met at a zoom call because we both are really passionate about working with people going through a divorce and then, you know, kind of coming out the other side. What's that going to look like? Um, just in different areas of that. So I decided to have Tina here, um, cause we get questions all the time about housing after divorce. Um, and Tina knows all about that and she's going to share with us. Tina, do you want to maybe just introduce yourself first?
Yeah, so Tina Hagan with Guild Mortgage, Mortgages with Tina. I've been working in real estate for over 12 years now, and throughout my journey within that career, I've become very passionate about the education piece of credit building, budgeting, and just making sure that people feel really secure in their finances and their housing payments.
In my youth, I came from a very financially unstable home. So I can definitely understand how having that financial stability for adults and parents and just families in general is so impactful to entire futures moving forward.
Yeah. So Taylor, I think we can both agree. Probably the two biggest questions we get when people are heading into divorce is what's going to happen to my kids? Of course we talk about that in other episodes. And the other one is housing. Like I want to keep this marital home. How can I make that happen? I don't want to keep this, but how can I make sure I still have a place to live after the divorce is final? All that kind of stuff. Taylor, what do you see when people are talking about housing following divorce?
Yeah, it's a major concern people have because obviously people are really concerned about their finances. They want to know how am I going to afford to live on my own after I get this divorce? Because a lot of people, especially in the economy that we're in right now, are really worried about if we're barely making ends meet right now or if we're bringing on new debt right now or if we have questions about how can we grow our income and be more financially stable right now. If we take a pot of money that covers one house,
Speaker 2 (03:08.202)
and split it into two living situations, will I be okay? And so people are always concerned because like, what's the crux of your financial stability and your lifeline for almost everything? Being able to go home, having a house. And so, yes, we hear all the time, like, can I afford to stay here? Should I look at moving? Should I own something else and should I rent? So, and that is a big thing that has to be resolved in every single divorce decree is who's going to, if you own a house, who's going to stay living there? Who's going to take over the mortgage?
When are we gonna get the other person off the mortgage? And is somebody entitled, the person not living in the house entitled to some sort of equity cash out or payment once the divorce is finalized? And when do they get it? So it's giant, huge topics. I'm really glad we have somebody who is specialized here today in mortgages who can tell us about it. So Tina, one of the big, but I think a consideration that a lot of women have right away is can I just stay where I'm at? Can I afford to keep living in this house that I live in?
My kids were born here. I brought them home here. This is where their core memories are, whatever. Can I stay living in my house? So for somebody who's concerned about that, how can they best kind of like put themselves in a situation to be able to keep living in the house or what should they be thinking about?
I'm a big proponent of knowing your budget. It always amazes me how many folks like don't know what their monthly cashflow situation looks like. So understanding from your budget perspective, is this monthly payment something that you're comfortable with, your current mortgage payment? And then also thinking, well, if we do have to refinance your current mortgage to get your ex off of the mortgage.
what is that monthly payment going to be looking like? So the sooner you can loop in your mortgage professional, I think the better, just because then we can kind of guide you when we're having those conversations while the decree is being written so that we have more of that information. Because so much of what we look at, it's so hard because it's not just the, you've been making the payment, so we're just gonna refinance you, right? We need to make sure that you can afford the monthly payments too.
Speaker 1 (05:18.52)
So we wanna see that we have that cashflow coming in to support the new mortgage payment if we most likely do have to refinance. Most of the time we wanna do that full refinance. So we're kind of redoing the whole loan to remove the other spouse from the mortgage and most likely take that equity out. In some instances, I've seen it where we can just do a second mortgage, a home equity loan and
the spouses will have the agreement that they won't have to do a refinance until years in the future. Taylor, how often do you see that?
Not a lot. And I honestly don't advise it a lot because it's risky for the person who doesn't live in the house anymore. Like your spouse, you know, your ex spouse, which most people are getting divorced for a reason. Sometimes finances are the reason. And so it's pretty risky for me to say, Hey, I'm going to stay on this mortgage loan with you. And I'm just going to trust that you're going to have the ability to keep making the payments long-term. And that's not going to damage me. Also, if I don't make
a whole lot of money being on one mortgage might preclude me from going out and getting another mortgage, right? So maybe I'm stuck renting, living with a family member or something. So I just don't see it that often.
Yes, exactly. And there are quite a few times where we look at adding co-signers. So if we're looking to do that refinance with or without cash out of the property to pay off an X, we can add a co-signer to a mortgage. So if you have a family member or a friend who has that additional cash flow, we can do that. But sometimes we look at the numbers and we look at it, just like, unfortunately, we're not able to keep you in this house, right? We just don't have enough income coming in.
Speaker 2 (07:08.462)
An income for the purposes of a mortgage, does that include payments of child support and spousal maintenance? Or like, can it be from all sources? Can people take gifts? Like what do we need for income?
Yeah, so typically for child support and spousal maintenance to do the refinance, we have to see that you've been receiving that income for six to 12 months, depending upon what loan type. And that's where I think having that conversation with your loan professional while you're writing in the decree is really great because if I can only qualify you for the loan type where we have to see 12 months of spousal maintenance being paid and your divorce decree says that you have to refinance within a six month time period,
then we're not able to use that income to support the housing payment, right? So those guidelines and those timelines can become really important with that. Otherwise we are looking at using just like your standard income coming in. One thing I try to make sure to tell people is to not like, we tend to have these knee jerk reactions during these like major life transitions, these like metamorphosis.
where you want to rip off the band-aid and completely change your life and go out on your own and like build your own business or get a new job in addition to the divorce. And for mortgages, it's a lot of a history and what can we track and what can we show? So if we go from a full-time employee to now starting our own business, that's going to throw a huge wrench in our timeline. Or if we go from full-time work to part-time work, that's going to go throw a huge wrench in our timeline also.
Yeah, that's really interesting because if you have the benefit of just talking to somebody who could tell you whether you would qualify for something or how you could qualify for something, what's that number that you need to hit? And you knew that in advance. Think about how empowered you would be walking into a mediation or into a temporary motion hearing where you can ask for those things. You can ask for child support to start now. You could instead of just like trusting that person's going to keep paying the bills or whatever, you could have it formalized.
Speaker 2 (09:13.45)
as child support, even if the money's not anymore, right? But just to have it formalized in an order where you can show the Venmo payment from person A to person B over a period of time while we're pending this divorce, even if the divorce is amicable, right? There may be a reason to go out and get a temporary order. And so if you knew that, you could do that. And that would be huge. So that's really good advice, Tina.
Well, and as I'm so happy that you brought up the child support because there are so many times where I talk to folks and they're like, well, we don't have a formal agreement, but he or she, pay me just, you know, through Venmo transactions. I'm like, okay, so you don't have a formal agreement. Is it a consistent amount every month? And they're like, well, no, some months it's more, some months it's less. Well, that's a red flag for us. Or if they do have a agreement, are they consistently paying you? And they're like, well, yep, they just give me cash at drop-off. And I'm like,
well, we can't use cash. have to have some type of record of that being sent, right? So if we can kind of guide you through that process, just to make sure that everything is set up so that it's easier down the road for you, I think that's really wonderful.
Yeah.
Okay, I have another question, Tina. You talked about like, if somebody is going from full time to part time, or if they're starting their own business or whatever. so many women that I work with are either fully stay at home moms and not working at all, or maybe they're working part time. I've actually worked with several homeschooling moms who are like,
Speaker 3 (10:41.846)
while we've been homeschooling, but I know I'm going to need to put my kids in school and get a full-time job or whatever it is. So let's say somebody has very little or no income and then they're going to be getting a full-time job. Like how far into the job do they have to be to make that count for mortgage payments or what? Can you talk more about that?
Yes. So, and again, it will depend upon what loan program they're eligible for, because there are so many different rules within that. But typically, if they have an offer letter for either a salary or a full-time standard 40-hour position, then we just need their first pay stub. Sometimes, though, we need to show that they've been at the job for full year before we can look at using the income.
And that's where it'll just depend upon their like total financial picture. But if they can find a salaried position or a full-time 40 hours per week guaranteed, we can use that income right away.
And I mean, this would be for whether you want to stay in your current home or get a new one.
or buy a new one. Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:53.71)
Cool. So let's talk a little bit about buying a new house because that's slightly different than trying to qualify to stay in your existing home because now we have a brand new purchase transaction versus a refi. What are some things or are there different things or different considerations if you're purchasing something new as opposed to staying in the old
One of my biggest recommendations is that we don't have any massive changes to debts that you currently hold. So what a lot of folks will do is they will sell their current house and they'll get the proceeds that they're allotted versus their spouse. And then they'll pay off a massive amount of debt. So they'll pay off huge chunks to credit cards, huge chunks of student loans, things like that.
where we maybe could have used those funds better in different types of allocations towards say like the down payment or other restructuring. So again, like any like massive amounts of restructuring of our debts, we want to have those conversations together too. And with that, the biggest thing is like, let's look at the finances and make sure that the budget works out and see, do we need to have a little bit more time for
your job history, do we need to look at adding a co-signer, things like that. In regards to the refinance versus the purchase, we don't really have too many like other stipulations between the two of them.
couple of things you just said were really interesting one with making major changes to the debt restructuring and it just keeps bringing me back to like if people talk to mortgage professionals before they drafted finalize and sign their decrees because actually there are a lot of decrees that we see where people are ordered to use the proceeds from sale of the home to pay off certain debts because they're not able to maybe refinance those debts to get the other spouse off of it because when you split you split
Speaker 2 (13:56.118)
And so I shouldn't still be on your car. You shouldn't still be on my credit card and my personal loan or the HELOC that's on the house that you live in or whatever. And so it'll say the parties are going to sell the home. They're going to split the proceeds equally. before the net proceeds will be split equally. And we would define the net proceeds, right? As everything that's left after you paid off Sally's credit card and Jimmy's truck loan, right? And then we'll split everything else. Cause that is
you know, maybe what's fair, but I don't think people understand that there's an interplay then and it may be an implication when you go out and want to buy some real estate.
Right. And for us, a lot of the times, if we can see that Jimmy is taking over his Honda truck loan, then I get to remove Jimmy's truck loan from Sally's debt ratio as soon as that decree is finalized. So I don't need to see that it's been paid off or that it's been refinanced because legally that truck loan is now Jimmy's. So I don't have to worry about that payment for Sally.
So a lot of questions we get when people know that they want to buy something new instead of staying in the old and the old home, whether or not they know if the other spouse is going to stay in the old home or not is how does timing play into that? Like if you want to go buy something, do you need to have the house sold first? Do you close all on the same day? Like how does that work for people?
That's a really great question and it's a very individual answer because it depends upon, so the spouse that is looking to buy the new house, it depends on their financial situation because if in theory their income is great enough that they can afford to cover both loans, they could buy the new house without having to sell the current house. In a lot of situations for one person's income, paying for two mortgages is a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:52.174)
So we could make an offer on a new house and have it be accepted stating that it's contingent upon the sale of the current house. So then we would structure, we would work with their realtor to structure those transactions so that the current house would sell before they buy the new house. I've had some transactions happen same day, like you sell in the morning and buy in the afternoon. That was very standard, like pre-COVID. Now folks tend to not want that high stake stress level.
So we'll see them sell, live with family or a long-term rental for like a week or two and then buy on the new house.
because then we have all the proceeds, they're allotted proceeds from the sale of the house to then use towards the new purchase. That's the other question is how do I have access to that equity in my current house to put towards my new house? Well, typically we want to see that sale, especially sometimes we can do a second mortgage on the current house, but if we're in the middle of divorce proceedings or if we've just finalized the divorce, we don't want to put an additional lien.
on the existing house.
Yeah, well, that's really
Speaker 3 (17:04.513)
related question that I get sometimes. said he wants to stay in our current house. I want to go buy a different house. Can I do that before the divorce is final? Or like, do I have to wait until after the divorce is final related to like, if I buy a house now, then is it half his?
I normally tell people to have a very long conversation with their attorney when we want to buy while you're still legally married because Minnesota is a marital interest state.
Yeah, so it's one to buy two to sell as they say. And what that means is, if you were to buy a piece of property, while you're married to somebody or own it before you're married and sell it during the marriage, that it literally takes two people to sign the deed in order for the property conveyance to be valid. And so when people are divorcing, we need to separate out that interest.
And while it all might be fine and we might all agree that, you bought a house a month before we got divorced. I'm not going to fight, fight you on it or contest that. I'm happy to just sign off on it. That transaction still has to take place where we have that separation at the time of the divorce, like somewhere, somehow there's got to be some ownership interest. There's more to it. Sometimes people buy something and they only get their name on it. And sometimes, which I often don't know how they
do that because sometimes like when you're dealing with title companies and you're dealing with like all of these other people, they want to know that the spouse knows that you're taking out this loan or encumbrance. They want to know what the plan is for title. I have found that real estate transactions are actually super complex, having been a party to a bunch of them because I do some other work with like some equity stuff and some reverse mortgage stuff in another part of my business. But it's like really stressful. So I can see why people are always super like
Speaker 2 (19:05.602)
you know, afraid of like, I doing this right? And why they should be talking to a mortgage professional or their attorney or whoever before they just go out and do stuff because you can get wrapped up in some lean structures that can really screw you up later. So yeah, I would say make sure everybody's in agreement if we're buying real estate during a divorce proceeding. And I would go so far as like, can we have some court orders entered in the process?
so that we're really clear and we don't have to try to remember what we promised each other later. Simplicity sake, cover yourself, right?
Do you wanna talk about some like common mistakes you see people making throughout this process?
Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, the most common mistake is everything is emotional, right? Your housing is so emotional. Finances are so emotional. Getting a divorce is very emotional. So I see people make these knee-jerk decisions that then come to bite us in the butt later, where not quitting your job, not deciding to just pay off all of your debts. I've had
I had a woman in the past where I was like, okay, cool. Well, I need a copy of your full divorce decree. She's like, I had a burning ceremony. I burned the certified copy. I'm done with that. was like, unfortunately, I'm going to have to ask you to go to the county and get a duplicate because I do need a certified copy to send down back to the county for the mortgage. So really having your trusted team of advisors and talking through these major life decisions with them.
Speaker 1 (20:49.74)
before you decide to have make some of these like knee jerk reactions.
would you say that that's a common pitfall that you see people make is purchasing things or making big transactions right before the divorce is finalized?
Because it kind of goes back to those knee-jerk reactions. And this is also something that we just talk about in buying a house 101 is don't make any major financial changes during the purchase process. Don't go out and buy a new vehicle or get a new lease or something like a new vehicle lease along those lines because you just get this wild hair and you want to change everything about your life.
Because that will drastically change your finances and then all of a sudden we can't buy your house anymore.
Wow, I wouldn't have thought of that.
Speaker 1 (21:40.014)
Oh yeah, it happens all the time where folks are like, well, I have a longer commute now, so now I need a new car. So I'm going to trade in, you know, my old clunker and get a new vehicle. And all of a sudden, I mean, the dealership doesn't care what your debt ratio is and they'll give you any type of vehicle loan you want where I very closely care about your debt ratio.
Yeah. Well, cause like, can't tell you how many people roll up to my office in a new year. And you're like, you weren't driving that the first time I met you and you come in to sign your real estate. Cause you have to sign like, if you have to sign any quit claim deeds or anything, when it's over, I might see you again after the divorce is finalized. And you're like, is that a Tesla? Hmm. You got to tell you right now. Like, okay. Like, so really interesting. Good to know.
I'm sure it's a really nice lease payment. Yeah, very affordable.
I'm sure with the price of vehicles, I'm going to keep pushing my minivan for a while longer. So let's talk about some of the education that you do with people. Because I think Tina, you said that's like one of your giant passions is making sure people are educated about their finances so that they can be empowered to buy real estate and like realize their dreams as far as their homes. How do you go out and educate people? How can people find you to get some education?
Yes. So I despise that so much surrounding our finances still feels like this old boys club where I have a credit building webinar. do a ton of webinars and a ton of in-person seminars, but one of my webinars specifically talks about credit building. And I feel like we're essentially all playing this game of monopoly, except we don't have the rules.
Speaker 1 (23:31.414)
We don't understand, no one tells us the rules of how to win the game. So we're just kind of all fumbling along at our own pace and trying to figure out how to be successful with our credit scores and with budgeting and the American dream. So I offer free webinars just hosted through Zoom that go through how to build your credit score and what some of these rules are.
how to look at budgeting and we talk about the emotions and the psychology behind how we're spending our money and trying to do some of that introspective work in addition to just looking at the Excel spreadsheets so that we're not just continuously making the same mistakes and the same mistakes that those that taught us about money were making before us.
That's such a good point. Like those cycles just continue and nobody really thinks to be like, wait, is this actually working for us or should we try something different? And Tina's like, we should try something different.
We should try something different. Yeah. And I'm ADD as is my spouse, as is his mother. So that dopamine hit that fancy purchase, like I completely understand that the little treat. My daughter just this week was like, hey, I had a really bad week. Can we go to Target? Well, I don't want to say no, because I also want to go to Target. but stopping and looking at it and saying, hey, what if we talk through these big feelings instead of just buying a new plushie?
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (25:01.494)
like I feel her and Target is everybody's happy place. Yes. Yeah. And we do live in that instant gratification. The doom scroll culture, the like I need some hit to make me feel alive, whatever that is, right. And so that definitely is the thing that's very real for a lot of people. And we have to be cognizant and train ourselves and everything that all of us like as much as we all want to be like, I'm not my mother for a lot of people.
first.
Speaker 1 (25:09.944)
culture, right?
Speaker 2 (25:29.642)
you are your mother when it comes to money. Our financial and money mindsets, this is like there's science, this is all proven somewhere by some guy on the internet, tells us that like the way we see money is so deeply ingrained in us based upon the ways that we were raised. And so there's a lot of work to be done to break those cycles so that if you want something different, you can do something different to get what you've never had.
Right? Because that's just, it's really hard to break free. So yeah, that's a really great point. Do you have any specific ways or words of encouragement you can offer to a lot of our listeners who are women and moms who are doing the first time going out and maybe getting a house for themselves for the first time ever, being the person that owns their own home, even if it's the home that they owned with their ex-spouse, like they're the lady of the manor now.
You know, and they've never had this giant responsibility of having a home by themselves. I know that that's my story. I did not buy a home before I was in a marriage relationship. I'd never been a homeowner before. So do you have words of encouragement you can offer to women who maybe don't think it's possible or scared about what the future holds?
Absolutely. I work with so many clients, first time home buyers, refinancing, especially first time home buyers though, that they have this internal voice that tells them that this can never be a reality for them, right? Their past live experiences have told them that they're not strong enough, they're not capable, they don't have the power to take on this themselves. And having the team.
to support you and to actually sit down, talk through the numbers, treat you more than just a transaction, treat you more than just a loan and say, hey, I'm gonna listen to your fears. I'm going to talk you through them so that you are comfortable and confident in your power and you understand the numbers. I'm not just gonna sit here and tell you, well, your debt ratio looks fine. No, let's talk about your budget from your viewpoint and say, actually, you're right. I think that...
Speaker 1 (27:44.462)
this loan might be a little too costly for you unless we could figure out a way to change X, Y, or Z. So just having that power of knowing that you can work through this, we can do hard and difficult things, and finding the team to support you throughout the entire process versus just saying, well, yeah, we can get you into that loan. No worries. When in actuality, you're going to be staying awake every night trying to figure out how you're going to make that mortgage payment.
is a hard place to be. Yeah, really hard place to be. You mentioned, working a lot with first time home buyers. And if you could speak a little bit to the women who may be buying something really isn't an option for them right now, staying in the current home really is not an option to them right now. And maybe they got to do what I did, which is go back home and spend a year with mom and dad.
and then maybe they can go out and rent and whatever, but they know that in their heart of hearts, what they ultimately want is to be a homeowner again. And I brought this up because you mentioned first time home buyers. Can you talk a little bit about if there's an opportunity for people to qualify as a first time home buyer a second time around?
Yes. So if you haven't owned real estate in three years, you are technically a first time home buyer again. We, if you haven't owned in three years, we quantify you as a first time home buyer. And there are quite a few programs and grants, especially very grateful that we live in the state of Minnesota. there are a few programs that are specifically targeted at first time home buyers and lower income that will help folks get into housing.
And I love talking to people and having like that long on ramp of purchasing. So we may have like just finalized your divorce and you're like, well, my goal is to own a house. I know that I can't get into a house right now because of all these different factors, but let's sit down, let's have that conversation and let's make a game plan so that we know in six, 12, 24 months, then we can start looking at owning a house and taking the steps then.
Speaker 2 (29:56.642)
That's great. Cause that gives so much hope to people that like, you know, I can't tell you how dejected I felt after we bought this house. I had finished law school. I was doing the things you're supposed to do. I couldn't pull together a rent payment. I couldn't put together money to pay first month's rent, last month's rent and first month and the actual next month's payment, you know, basically three months in a row. Cause I didn't have anything.
And then I had to move home, right? And then you're kind of like, what are you going to do next? And there are a lot of women in that position who need to hear that, hey, maybe not today, but that doesn't mean not tomorrow.
Exactly. And then it becomes fun to, especially, I love working with single women buyers because it's really beautiful to watch them learn to trust in their power and to say like, well, we might have another partner in the future. We might have another situation in the future and we can turn, you can buy a property that's perfect for you at this chapter of life.
And we can turn that into a rental property or you can build up all this equity, this equity that is your money that you've earned. And then you get to choose what you do with that when you go to sell in the future. And just knowing that you built that and you created that. I mean, that's a gift that you can't give somebody.
Well, Tina, thanks so much. And for our listeners, we'll be dropping some resources from Tina and the show notes. You can make it to some of our upcoming webinars that helps people navigate learning their own finances and their budgets so they can be empowered to own real estate in the future.
Speaker 3 (31:40.472)
Thanks for hanging out with us on the Divorce Queens podcast. If you loved today's episode, be sure to hit subscribe and leave us review. It helps more women find the support they deserve.
You can find me, Taylor, on Instagram at momlawyeredivorced and you can find Rachel at RachelTalksDivorced. Got questions? Need a pep talk? Want to share your story? Slide into our DMs.
care for it.
Divorce is not the end of your story. It is the beginning of your comeback. See you next week.
