Legal Question in Family Law in Maine
Equitable Distribution
I have filed a complaint for divorce in Maine. I have a court date for a case management hearing. I have sent a letter to my wife, informing her of that date.
My wife and her first husband built the home we lived in. They resided in it for two years before getting divorced. I moved in shortly after, and a year later we refinanced the mortgage in our names. Thus removing her husband and her parents names from the mortgage and the deed, and putting them in hers and my name only. A year later we did another refinance and got $20,000.00 cash out. She used $12,000.00 to pay off her vehicle(which the title is in both of our names) and gave me the rest. We had planned to build a garage with the rest of the money. I had the site prep done and had placed a deposit on building the garage.
The bottom fell out of the marriage, and I moved out 6 weeks ago and filed for divorce. I currently do not have a lawyer. I told her I would sign off from the house when she refinanced the mortgage, and would not seek any of the equity in the home or her vehicle. She believes she is entitled to the $8,000.00 I got from the refinance because she owned the house before we bought it together. Am I entitled to the rest of the equity or will I pay?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Equitable Distribution
Since you are representing yourself, you have likely already done some research regarding Divorce. Your research should include a review of Maine's Divorce Statutes, which start at 19-A MRSA 901 and continue on. The statutes define marital property, and exclude from the definition property that was owned by each party before the marriage. Your wife is correct on that score. However, non-marital property may be converted into marital property during the marriage if there is evidence of the intention to do so. Therefore, it is not black-and-white that if non-marital property was placed into joint hands (ie- the house) that it was converted into marital property. Would the evidence show that it was merely required by the lender? Or would it show that the intention was to finance other marital property, such as paying off the debt of a jointly titled marital asset like the car? The difficulty in predicting this situation should drive a negotiation. Is the $8,000 a fair estimate of the value you have in 1/2 the remaining equity in the home and 1/2 the equity in the car? It is also important to remember that an equitable distribution by the Court will also take into consideration the other assets of the parties such as retirement, even if some assets are non-marital. They won't be counted dollar-for-dollar with marital assets, but they will help the Judge to determine a larger sense of overall "fairness".
This sort of situation is best mediated and settled rather than litigated, and if litigated, it is difficult to successfully appeal.
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