Anonymous wrote:Re lawyer here. Please look up tenants by entirety. Only available to married people.

agree. If it's available in your state, removes a lot of liability concerns.

The other thing is check the website you are looking at carefully. In my locale, the person listed first on a title is the only one listed prominantly on the website. To see co-owners, you have to click through a couple of tabs to find them. So you could just be looking at the wrong thing.

Anonymous wrote:It can be complicated for a foreign person to own US property. For example, when they sell it, if the sales price is over $300,000, then the buyer generally has to withhold 10% of the purchase price and pay it to the IRS. They may be more likely to owe tax on a sale as well.

Foreigner here. This is not true. I have bought and sold property in the US with no such issues.

Re lawyer here. Please look up tenants by entirety. Only available to married people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some PPs got mortgage and title confused. If one spouse has a bad credit score, it may make sense if only the other spouse takes out the mortgage, that is: is liable for the loan. But that does not prevent the spouse with the lousy credit score to be on the title.

In fact, for a married couple this is the smart thing to do. With both spouses on the title you have a "joint tenancy". Should one of you die, the other automatically gets the to be the only owner of the house. The share of the deceased does not go through probate but "dissolves".

Also, in case there will ever be a divorce, you will want to be on the title.

Foreign citizens can be on the title. If they qualify for a mortgage depends on the circumstances. But they still can be on the title, of course.

OP here, thanks for all the responses...

My brother married a foreign citizen a couple years ago, his wife does own a business here in the US (not a law firm!) but she is still not a US citizen. They bought a house a few months ago, a few weeks after they had a baby. Today, I was going to mail a Christmas gift to the baby. I had lost their address (with email/phone/facebook, etc--it's not like I've really used their home address often in the last few months!) so I just googled my brother's name and the name of the town they bought in to see if I could find out the address. The google search gave me a page from the title company they used, which showed the address and only listed my brother's name, not his wife's. I just thought that was odd.

I know with my husband and I--I am SAHM with technically no income--so his name is the only one on the mortgage, but both of our names are on the title--specifically because of what the PP I quote said--if my Dh was to die, I don't want to "inherit" the house and have to pay an inheritance tax, etc. on it.

It sounds like the issue might be the business. If the business were to go into bankruptcy, they couldn't take the house if her name is not on the title.

It can be complicated for a foreign person to own US property. For example, when they sell it, if the sales price is over $300,000, then the buyer generally has to withhold 10% of the purchase price and pay it to the IRS. They may be more likely to owe tax on a sale as well.

Anonymous wrote:Some PPs got mortgage and title confused. If one spouse has a bad credit score, it may make sense if only the other spouse takes out the mortgage, that is: is liable for the loan. But that does not prevent the spouse with the lousy credit score to be on the title.

In fact, for a married couple this is the smart thing to do. With both spouses on the title you have a "joint tenancy". Should one of you die, the other automatically gets the to be the only owner of the house. The share of the deceased does not go through probate but "dissolves".

Also, in case there will ever be a divorce, you will want to be on the title.

Foreign citizens can be on the title. If they qualify for a mortgage depends on the circumstances. But they still can be on the title, of course.

No, for a married, this is a STUPID thing to do, for the spouse who has the whole mortgage. This means in the event of a split, the partner that is on title but not on mortgage is entitled to half of the value of the home, and has no obligation to pay the mortgage. If the home is underwater, needs a short sale or does not sell, the partner on title only can demand the payment of half the value of the home and the partner that has the full mortgage MUST pay the amount in cash out of pocket. I have seen this happen and the partner with the mortgage was forced to file personal bankruptcy because they could not afford to pay half of the value of the house and the house would not sell. They had joint title and he was up a creek because he held the full mortgage. The amount he owed was more than he could pay out of pocket and she took him to the cleaners. He filed for bankruptcy, lost the home, and when the house was foreclosed on, she took the full value of the estate because of her half of the home that he was required to pay her for, even though he lost the home. It was ugly and several years later, he's been in so much trouble trying to get back on his feet, he's rotated for a few months at a time living on people's couches. He's been evicted twice from places and he can't seem to get stable again.

If a spouse has lousy credit, you would be better off not marrying that person than trying to purchase under this plan. If you purchase jointly, if you can qualify for a mortgage, you'll qualify for less loan and with higher interest payments. If you do this, then you had better have a family law lawyer review the situation and help you create a prenuptial that will include the separation and obligations in the event of separation to include that the spouse with title but no mortgage may not take any marital funds out until the property sells. That partner can forced a partition sale, but cannot take funds from the spouse with the mortgage until the property is sold. The above is horrible financial advice that all real estate lawyers warn you not to do and should only be done in consultation with a family law lawyer. This always applies in state that are separate property states and may apply in some states that are community property states. There are some community property states which will still hold the partner that is not on the mortgage liable.

Also, please note that some mortgage companies will not allow you to do what you propose. The liability issues are too great and they will refuse to close in such a situation. Make sure you do your homework and ensure that you can do this with your lender of choice.

Anonymous wrote:Some PPs got mortgage and title confused. If one spouse has a bad credit score, it may make sense if only the other spouse takes out the mortgage, that is: is liable for the loan. But that does not prevent the spouse with the lousy credit score to be on the title.

In fact, for a married couple this is the smart thing to do. With both spouses on the title you have a "joint tenancy". Should one of you die, the other automatically gets the to be the only owner of the house. The share of the deceased does not go through probate but "dissolves".

Also, in case there will ever be a divorce, you will want to be on the title.

Foreign citizens can be on the title. If they qualify for a mortgage depends on the circumstances. But they still can be on the title, of course.

OP here, thanks for all the responses...

My brother married a foreign citizen a couple years ago, his wife does own a business here in the US (not a law firm!) but she is still not a US citizen. They bought a house a few months ago, a few weeks after they had a baby. Today, I was going to mail a Christmas gift to the baby. I had lost their address (with email/phone/facebook, etc--it's not like I've really used their home address often in the last few months!) so I just googled my brother's name and the name of the town they bought in to see if I could find out the address. The google search gave me a page from the title company they used, which showed the address and only listed my brother's name, not his wife's. I just thought that was odd.

I know with my husband and I--I am SAHM with technically no income--so his name is the only one on the mortgage, but both of our names are on the title--specifically because of what the PP I quote said--if my Dh was to die, I don't want to "inherit" the house and have to pay an inheritance tax, etc. on it.

Seriously-it would have to be to shield the asset in a malpractice lawsuit for a sole practitioner attorney.

However, I am not on the mortgage Due to credit, am on the title. It would have been a deal breaker for me.

Some PPs got mortgage and title confused. If one spouse has a bad credit score, it may make sense if only the other spouse takes out the mortgage, that is: is liable for the loan. But that does not prevent the spouse with the lousy credit score to be on the title.

In fact, for a married couple this is the smart thing to do. With both spouses on the title you have a "joint tenancy". Should one of you die, the other automatically gets the to be the only owner of the house. The share of the deceased does not go through probate but "dissolves".

Also, in case there will ever be a divorce, you will want to be on the title.

Foreign citizens can be on the title. If they qualify for a mortgage depends on the circumstances. But they still can be on the title, of course.

Anonymous wrote:...or the spouse is a foreign citizen... and there all kinds of extra hoops and forms to sign...

no. foreing citizen here. my name is on deed and on mortage. no problems, nothing special to sign with respect to my husband. who is a US citizen (BTW, he had significant student loans when we took the morgtage and we had no problems in getting the loan)

...or the spouse is a foreign citizen... and there all kinds of extra hoops and forms to sign...

Sometimes partners in law firms or other businesses that dont have limited liability will title in spouses name so that their house isn't included in their assets. Most law firms are LLPs now but a few aren't.

It's usually because one spouse has such horrible credit they couldn't be on loan.

Or one owned it prior to marriage.

In a divorce you better hope your name is on deed/title.

I have so much student loan debt that nobody would give me a loan, ergo my husband took the mortgage out in his own name.

If a couple is married, have children, then buy a house...is there any advantage to only having the man's name on the title? Maybe some type of tax thing or something?