A real estate attorney has shared a heartbreaking story of what can go wrong when you purchase a house with your significant other if you’re unmarried.
Cristen Martinez, the president of Florida-based Martinez Law, said in one case, a father was evicted after breaking up with his girlfriend of 20 years.
Martinez, who runs the TikTok account @Cristen.Martinez, said the story is just one example of the many perils that can await you when you decide to buy a home together without being married first.
“If you are not married, do not purchase property with your significant other unless you have a written agreement,” Martinez said in a recent TikTok video.
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
In this recent case, Martinez said the couple was together for 20 years and had children. Despite this, they never legally married.
Upon looking to purchase a house, the girlfriend’s credit was revealed to be better than the boyfriend’s. Due to this, the woman’s name was the only one listed on the mortgage and the deed.
After living there together as a family for 16 years, the couple broke up. The girlfriend moved out and then claimed the boyfriend was living there as a tenant. After the breakup, the girlfriend slapped down a three-day eviction notice, and now the man finds himself being kicked out of a house he put $100,000 into.
“He’s currently living there having joint custody of their kids,” Martinez said, adding the boyfriend had spent around $100,000 on renovations and property improvements.
While Martinez said he could get reimbursed via an equitable loan or constructive trust, the issue lies in the fact that he doesn’t have any right to the property.
“The bottom line is it is a huge mess,” Martinez said. “They weren’t married. They obviously didn’t expect to break up, but you got to go into relationships recognizing that that is at least a possibility.”
Martinez said couples should always contact a real estate attorney and look into a joint ownership agreement.
Realtors say this is not the first time they’ve heard of a disaster striking couples sharing a home without any legal agreement.
According to Nathan Garrett, a real estate agent in Kentucky and the owner of Garretts Realty, breaking up isn’t the only thing that can go wrong. In cases where one dies before the other, many complications abound as well.
“If one partner passes away without a will, their share of the property could automatically pass to their next relative, rather than their partner, leading to complicated and unwanted legal disputes,” Garrett told Newsweek.
Kattie Messenger, another realtor at Keller Williams Louisville East, said she even fell victim to this situation after buying a first house with her boyfriend.
“Since we weren’t married, our deed was not written as a survivorship deed,” Messenger told Newsweek. “A deed written in survivorship means if something were to happen to one party, the interest they had in the house would automatically go to the surviving partner.”
The way the deed was initially written meant the next heirs would own 50 percent instead, so Messenger quickly fixed this after getting her real estate license.
Conversations around who would live in the home and how the house’s costs would be split should take place before moving in, family attorney Randall M. Kessler of Kessler & Solomiany said.
“Buying a house together for unmarried partners is generally a very bad idea,” Kessler told Newsweek. “Aside from the legal and financial potential problems, friendships can be lost as well. We have seen many unmarried couples get entangled in litigation for years.”
“Bottom line, don’t do it,” Kessler said. “If you must, one person buy and the other contribute to living expenses.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.