Home ownership....

Hi ladies! I guess with this post I have officially crossed over

For those of you (or DH) that owned a home/condo before you were married, do you plan on adding the other persons name to the deed? If you do, have you gotten any information of what's involved in doing it, or if it's even necessary? Would we have to refinance?

Thanks for your input-

JenC

I know Im terrible but Im not adding my DH to my deed...more because Im too lazy to bother than anything.

But if the roles were reversed, I would make sure my name was on the deed.

We also bought our house togheter before we were married, but since my hubby put down the downpayment and such, his name was on the deed.

We just recently refinanced because we were able to get an interest rate less than 6% (we were paying 8.25%), so when we re-did the paperwork, both our names went on it.

However, if we hadn't refinanced, we would not have added my name to the deed. The house would automatically go to the surving spouse should anythign have ever happened. Once we have children, we will also clarify a lot of things in our will.

Hmm interesting question....
Well we bought before we were married but both names are were and are on the deed. However, its my maiden name. Do I need to change my name on that to my married name?

Thanks for the feedback ladies. I have a friend who unfortunately is going through a divorce. His soon to be x-wife is buying a townhouse on her own before the divorce is final. They were concerned about making sure the new townhouse is only hers and not connected to him or the marriage. His lawyers advised that as long as only her name is on it, it's not connected to him even though they are still married.

All of this made me think. I agree if something happened to me, it would go to my DH, but it made me nervous the whole separteness of it. I thought it would automatically become his as well.

I'm not sure if you need to change to your married name on the deed. I plan on calling my mortgage company to find out, and I'll let you know what M&T says.

Thanks again.
JenC

Kate, you don't need to change your name on the deed unless it was put on there with some special wording. DH and I bought the house before we were married. My maiden name is on the mortgage. Our attorney wanted to 'protect' DH in case the wedding never happened, because the downpayment was his. So...because the title and the mortgage had to match, we put my maiden name on the title, but it said we were 'joint tenants in common'. We never changed it after we were married, assuming that if anything ever happened to DH the house would automatically go to me as the spouse. However, when we refinanced, and I was signing everything in my maiden name (which is legal - just had to have proof still in that name - had an old driver's license with me) I asked the lawyer for the bank if it mattered, and he said because it was worded like that it did.

Joint tenants in common are assigned a 'percentage' of ownership -- turns out my husband was assigned 99% and I was assigned 1%. Because of this, if something happened to him, I would only get 1% of the value of the house! Pretty much like getting one of our front steps!!! Of course, neither of us was happy with this so we are currently in the process of changing the title to not only my married name, but removing the joint tenants in common crap.

Moral of this long winded story is that if there is no specific wording saying otherwise, you are fine and don't need to worry about your maiden name on the title.