Owners are divorced and hate each other

[Jose Guevarra]

Hi,

INITIAL SITUATION:

I found a property in pre-forclosure where the owners are on title and on the mortgage but, they have been divorced for years and hate each other and live far from each other. We are planning on giving the husband(who is a meth head and likely sex offender) an offer that will pay off his mortgage and he will walk away from the home.  He agreed to this and we were going to give him about $2500 for moving expenses.  

However, he changed his mind when he realized that his ex-wife was going to get half the $2500 which we explained to him earlier and he agreed to(I told you he was a meth head).

CURRENT SITUATION:

We are going to offer to pay off the mortgage and give him $15K which again he'll have to split with his wife.  

Can you think of any other options that we can exercise? What could we have done differently to avoid all this? Is there a way that we could have avoided this by getting the wife to sign over rights to the home? Quick Deed?

[Darrell Shepherd]

Al, you're my kinda guy.  I fire people that annoy me.  Buyers, selllers, workers, any of them.

To the OP, there's no real "this is the right way" to deal with this stuff, your job is to make it happen.  You really went from $2500 to $15k?

If they are both on title you've got to get them both to sign.  My thought is quit saying $15k that they split, just work on each signature.  You could pay one or the other for a quit claim deed, then get the other one to do a warranty deed to you.  

Personally, I'd take it sub2 on a table top close, then figure out the rest later.  You don't have to put them both in the same room at an attorney's office to own the house.

Check with an investor friendly closing attorney and see what your options are.  Sounds pretty ripe for post closing BS, but if the deal is great you'll get paid for working through this stuff.  

I'm guessing your real problem isn't that she's getting any money, its that you set the expectation that he was going to get $2500, then told him he was only getting $1250 so he's thinking she's getting HIS money.