Legal Question in Bankruptcy in United States

If his name is truly not on title and you have an entered divorce decree from before the bankruptcy with you as the sole owner of the property, you should be OK. The issue revolves around what type of property law your state follows: community property or common law. If you live in a common law state, likely there would never be an issue. In community property states all community property goes into the bankruptcy estate and is subject to being seized and sold by trustee. The fact that you have sole title and a divorce decree giving you sole ownership would probably protect you even if you do live in a community property state. You may want to have an attorney in your state review the documentation to be sure it is iron tight.

Greetings; The answer given by Attorney Winters is totally correct. I do not think you have a problem. Hopefully you are using an attorney to help you with the sale and that attorney should be able to double check our answers for you. Good luck.

I also doubt that you would have a problem. The arrangement with your house is part of your divorce property settlement, which is left untouched by the bankruptcy.

You should consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction who is competent in bankruptcy as well as divorce law. The previous answers assume that the divorce decree is fully enforceable. In most states, joint marital assets are divided in a divorce. If you attempted to skew the distribution in a homemade divorce or fraud on the divorce court, the trustee could challenge the exemption in his bankruptcy. It appears that the amount would be $50,000 in equity. Assume that he was entitled to $25,000 of it, and the trustee was able to grab it, now you have to look at the exemptions. Some states will allow that much of a wild card exemption, other states would deny it. Thus all the facts and circumstances must be known and all theories chased down and evaluated. I agree, that on the limited facts presented. should be no problem, especially if you owned the real estate prior to the marriage and it was not a marital asset.

Tom Zimmerman

W. Va.