The family home may be difficult to value because it is not easily converted to cash, maintenance costs, and implications of federal and state tax liability. During the divorce, your family's emotional attachment to your home can cause you to make poor decisions. Your family may be haunted by that decision for years after your divorce.

• Should you sell the family home?
• Do you keep it until the children are grown?
• Should you keep the home and buyout your soon-to-be ex-spouse, or vice versa?
• Can either of you afford to keep it after the divorce?

The answers to these questions and others can help you plan for problems associated with your home. Historically, the family home is the asset that causes controversy before and after a divorce. Selling the home and the division of its profits can create problems between you and your spouse.

Consult with your lawyer about your rights and responsibilities after you have read this section and put together your worksheets. Before you see your lawyer, gather the necessary documents and records about each piece of real estate. Get the documents for all the property in which you or your spouse has an interest in ownership. This includes property that you own in either of your names alone, jointly with another person or property owned by a trust or business in which either of you have interests.

• identification of the type of real estate and the type of
  ownership interest you have in the property
• the ownership history of your real estate
• real estate, income and capital gain taxes
• debts, such as loans and tax liens, that are secured by
  the real estate the value of the real estate
• the plans you must make to pay for and maintain the
  real estate as the divorce is pending

Identification
As previously mentioned, most couples own an interest in real estate in the form of a family home. Other types of real estate you may own are vacation property, rental property, commercial or office buildings, buildings on land leases, vacant land, mineral rights and other types of special use real estate. Each real estate property’s unique features could affect how you utilize it in your divorce, especially in the context of a settlement agreement. The following sections of this chapter contain examples of some of the methods you might use.

The title of the real estate may determine the interest you and your spouse have in keeping the real estate. Most married couples own property as tenants by the entirety and each spouse has an undivided one-half interest in the property. A divorce ends the ownership in tenancy by the entirety.

Joint tenancy is similar to tenants by the entirety except that the owners are usually not married to one another. In joint tenancy and tenants by the entirety, if one of the owners dies, the deceased person's interest passes to the other owner by operation of law.

Another way of holding title is as tenants in common. The interest owned by each tenant in common is divisible and can be inherited by the owner's heirs. This is customarily the way that unrelated persons, including divorced people, own real estate together. It may be the way that you and your ex-spouse own your real estate after the divorce.

History of Ownership
It is important to establish and document the history of your real estate ownership because each parcel's history affects the property's net worth. For example, real estate has tax implications that are usually assumed by the person receiving it in a divorce. Additionally, the history of your real estate helps you determine if the real estate that was owned before the marriage or inherited during the marriage is marital or separate property.

The history of the land’s usage enables you to analyze the financial and environmental risk, if any, you could incur from owning the property.

Prepare a history of your home ownership for each property you have owned, including those which you have sold. Make notes about any miscellaneous information that is important about the real estate.

Put together any source documents you used to back up your information. Organize your documents so that your history table is the first document in your real estate file.

Then attach the supporting documents in descending or ascending order to the file folder. Some of the relevant information you need for each piece of real estate is:

• Address, purchase price and date purchased

• Down payment amount and source of funds for the down payment

• Original loan amount and current balance

• List of improvements you have made and their cost depreciation
  claimed on any prior year's tax return

• Insurance proceeds received from any claim

• Costs to repair any damages or restoration costs

• Date sold, sale price, costs of sale and net proceeds