So…I admit I had a Blue Pill backslide on the weekend.

[Canadian SportsFanParticipant 216]

Beer wrote:

If you don’t have to worry about common law marriage and the only joint asset you have is the house, just tell her your done, you want to sell the house, and move out. I’m assuming she can’t afford it on her own…what are her choices…she can sell it and split the proceeds with you since its half yours, refuse to sell it, fall behind on payments, and neither of you get anything, or she can find a new sucker to split it with her and you can agree to a refi if she buys you out…otherwise your name is still on it and its technically half yours. Or maybe you want to keep it and you can offer her the chance to buy her out if you can get her to leave. If your worried you paid 2/3 of the costs and she paid 1/3 yet your only going to get 1/2 of the sale…just forget about it…the longer you stay the more its going to cost you. GTFO as fast as you can if you plan on ending it. Just consider it a bad investment, and a learning experience and move along.

I do have to worry in the sense that the downpayment was entirely mine!  I think bank records and the transfer coming entirely from my account would prove that, but it would be nice to have something in writing saying “this was his contribution, this was mine.”  All she should get back is the equity which she put into the house, plus whatever items she put in towards the house (which wasn’t much given any home repairs/improvements were put on a “joint” credit card which was always paid off by me anyways).

[BeerParticipant 11832]

So here are your choices…

1.  Cut your losses now and get out of the situation.

2.  Continue to live with her and every additional payment you make you are throwing more money away.  In addition, if she will not willingly split equity based on what you each paid, you will have to go to court to fight her for it.  Its going to cost you time, stress, and money to do that…as you will have to pay a lawyer and potentially waste days off from work to go to court that you could have spent relaxing or doing something fun.  I’m not a legal expert but you probably won’t win this fight anyhow if you both signed on to the property as a 50/50 owner which is all the mortgage loan will show.  You can’t retroactively change a contract.  I don’t know how much equity you are even talking about here…but if you have 50k equity and can walk away with 25k, or you can fight tooth and nail, waste a bunch of time and money, and maybe come out with 35k is it worth it?  You also have to keep in mind you might waste a lot of time and money and still only get 50% regardless…in which case you would have been better off not even trying.

I don’t know if you ever heard the expression stepping over a dollar to save a dime, but from the little I know about your situation it seems like this is what you are prepared to do.  I’m not saying I disagree with you, of course I think fair would be both getting back what you put into it, but I’m just saying if you both co-signed the loan and how equity would be split on sale or who would pay what share wasn’t predetermined I don’t think the court system is going to agree with you.

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