How the Crazy Real Estate Market Affects Divorce and Separation

The housing market, with its rapidly rising real estate prices, has been a topic of conversation across Canada.  It has also been a subject of interest in Family Courts, mediations and arbitrations.   Separated and divorcing spouses either want to make sure they continue to share in the rapidly increasing value of the home, or to make sure their former spouses do not.   When spouses are married, they have matrimonial homes – sometimes more than one per couple – and those can create a lot of opportunities to gain great wealth, at the expense of the other spouse, in this real estate market.  Common law couples do not equalize their property, so how they have arranged their finances may mean they share in every increase in real estate values or do not share them at all. 

In this episode of the Ontario Family Law Podcast, Certified Specialist in Family Law, John Schuman, explains how the increase in value of matrimonial and family homes is shared, or is not, before and after separation, in the current crazy real estate market.  How couples organize their finances can make differences of hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars when they separate.