Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

The bank that holds your mortgage (deed of trust) is going to have to sign off on the change unless you re-finance the home into your name alone, based on your income alone and your credit rating alone. That said, I don't see how removing your wife's name protects the home? If her teenage son does something wrong that makes her liable, and if the home is in your name alone, I'm not sure it would make much difference. Under community property laws in Washington, half of whatever you earn belongs to her. Every time someone sues a married person, it is standard operating procedure for the plaintiff's attorney to include the marital community.

So, a judgment against your marital community would necessarily impact your separate property. The court granting a potential judgment may tell you that it is between you and your wife to sort out in terms of what you have had to pay on her behalf, but that the plaintiff can collect against community assets. The home will not be a community asset, but your income will, and in the end, it all comes out the same.

On the other hand, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to cleverly hide or move assets around, or just declare bankruptcy, although that too is not automatically going to protect you from a judgment creditor. It would depend on what other assets you have at the time.

In terms of getting your wife off the title and deed of trust, unless your wife executes a post nuptial agreement and it can be shown that this document was entered into prior to any liability arising on her part, such that she cannot be said to have been trying to hide assets from any potential creditors of the judgment, then perhaps it might work. However, as I mentioned above you still have to get the bank to sign off on releasing her from responsibility for the deed of trust or will need to refinance it outright in your name. From your wife's perspective, this might not be such a great idea since she would be declaring that the house is all yours and she has no interest in it. Should your marriage ever go down the tubes and you wind up in a divorce court, that will not bode very well for her.

While I understand what you are trying to do to limit your liabilities, is a family law attorney, I suggest you consider treating the source of the problem, namely your rebellious teenage stepson. I'm not sure where his father is in all of this, but if he is in the picture, and has any significant financial resources of his own, he too could be held liable for any actions of his son. If things are at least civil between the boy's parents, and depending upon the boy's age, I think it is more productive to do something to solve his problems than it is to anticipate a civil suit and hide assets in anticipation of a judgment being entered against you. You also have to remember judgment or no judgment, even if you are completely financially protected from his actions, your wife and presumably you, will still have a rebellious teenage boy to deal with who may have some serious problems (I'm guessing they're serious if they lead to this kind of a judgment against you), for which you will eventually have to deal with. That may not represent as much of a financial danger as opposed to an emotional toll that your wife and likely you will have to bear. This is why I suggest you deal with that problem rather than worry so much about the financial aspect of everything. Note, I am not saying to forget about trying to protect your assets, I'm merely suggesting that you can't stop there. You need to deal with whatever is wrong with this boy, since in my experience although teenage boys, even rebellious ones, are cause for worry, usually parents are worried about what they will do to themselves as opposed to their financial exposure. The fact that you are so worried about your financial exposure tells me that his problems probably exceed the norm and will need to be dealt with at some point, either now when you can somewhat impose solutions on him, or later, when he is an adult and having a harder time trying to impose it upon himself. The longer you wait, the more expensive that will be financially and emotionally.