Legal Question in Business Law in Virginia

Re: Dividing real estate after our partners' divorce

Well, I don't think we can really answer the question in a meaningful way without seeing both the agreement between the four of you and the actual terms of the divorce court's order (and/or the property settlement).

However, if you say they "just" got divorced, that is within the last 21 days or so, I think you should immediately (like today) file something with the Court and ask for a hearing. (That is, you should go to the courthouse of the relevant County, ask for the file, read what it says, and if it seems to be of concern, ask for a hearing.)

Specifically, if the Court considered as their "property" something owned also by others, and did not consider the position or interest of the other owners, this would be a significant error. (I mean practically, not necessarily the court's fault because nobody told the court.)

The court should not have been ordering anything about the property without also considering the other owners of the property.

Now, I am not sure that the court did. The court may have only ordered a division of their PART of the ownership of the property, not the entire property as a whole. The court may have done it correctly. But you really should have had an opportunity to speak up if it affects your property. So you would want to ask for a hearing (you have to schedule it with the clerk on an available date filnig a PRAECIPE which is just a fancy word for a notice to everyone that the case will be heard.)

Specifically, you want to OBJECT to any order purporting to divide or assign YOUR property to other people without you being heard and protecdted in that.

The court cannot give what belongs to you to someone else in a divorce proceeding (but the court needs to be alerted to this situation.)

I only emphasize a hearing because you may have to act fast on that to do it before the order becomes final.

Otherwise you should study the divorce order first to know what actually happened.

I don't understand about the ex-wife saying she can't pay for the vacant house. What payments would she be making? Is she living there? Is she officially in bankruptcy or just saying that?