I am in the process of divorcing my husband of over 11 years (in California). I have been a cosigner for two houses with my mom since before I got married to this man. The houses were in need of repair, so while we lived in each house my husband and did work on them. He is a carpenter by trade, so I was only assisting him when we fixed the houses, and we paid for the material out of our own pocket. My question is: how likely is a judge to award him any money for having done his part of the remodeling? Some of the remodeling was done by his father, whom we paid cash and some of it he asked my mom to pay him for doing apart from the things we both did out of our own pocket. Thank you.

This is a vague answer, but it all depends on how good his lawyer is.

There will need to be some way to determine the worth of what he did and it might come down to a negotiation point.

For instance, say he wants 10k in cash assets in exchange for it. You want to give him nothing. If he chooses to argue with you about it, at what point does it make more sense to give him 7500 than pay your lawyer $250/hour to fight it.

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Originally Posted by girlsmom

I am in the process of divorcing my husband of over 11 years (in California). I have been a cosigner for two houses with my mom since before I got married to this man. The houses were in need of repair, so while we lived in each house my husband and did work on them. He is a carpenter by trade, so I was only assisting him when we fixed the houses, and we paid for the material out of our own pocket. My question is: how likely is a judge to award him any money for having done his part of the remodeling? Some of the remodeling was done by his father, whom we paid cash and some of it he asked my mom to pay him for doing appart from the things we both did out of our own pocket. Thank you.

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Who exactly " owned " the home that you were working on and if they were owned by your mother or other third party then the next question is while you lived in the homes did you pay rent ?

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Originally Posted by girlsmom

I am in the process of divorcing my husband of over 11 years (in California). I have been a cosigner for two houses with my mom since before I got married to this man. The houses were in need of repair, so while we lived in each house my husband and did work on them. He is a carpenter by trade, so I was only assisting him when we fixed the houses, and we paid for the material out of our own pocket. My question is: how likely is a judge to award him any money for having done his part of the remodeling? Some of the remodeling was done by his father, whom we paid cash and some of it he asked my mom to pay him for doing appart from the things we both did out of our own pocket. Thank you.

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You need to say who was on title to the homes. You said you were a "co-signer" but are you on title as co-tenant? If no, then this is a non-issue, or should I say an issue that's not between you and your husband in the disso (maybe you each have some claim against your mom for work performed or improvements on the house but that's between you and her--- if your husband wanted to make a big deal about it he might try to join your mom to the disso or file a separate suit against her for money owed and then consolidate the civil case with the disso, but that's about all). If you are on title, then there could be a community right of reimbursement (community property used to improve separate property) if the value of the house increased as a result of the improvement (unlikely in this market). There might still be a right of reimbursement for the value of the labor and materials invested in the property. Reimbursement is limited to the greater of the value of the improvement or the amount of money (labor, materials) invested (actually the case law on this is a little fuzzy on this but this is generally how it goes). For an interesting discussion of the history of the law in California on this subject see In re the Marriage of Wolfe (2001) 91 Cal. App. 4th 962, accessible at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov.