The plain answer
For a while, yes. One person can decline to sign, and that stops a sale. It does not stop the divorce, and if the two of you cannot agree, the decision usually ends up with the court instead of with you. Most people would rather keep it.
If both names are on the deed, both signatures are needed to sell. So yes, in the short term, one person saying no is enough to stop a sale from happening. What that refusal does not do is make the question go away, because the house still has to be dealt with before the divorce can be finalised.
What usually happens next
When two people cannot agree about the house, the decision moves up a level. Attorneys negotiate it, or a mediator works through it, or eventually a judge decides. Courts have broad authority to divide marital property and can order a sale where that is the fair way to divide it. The important thing to understand is that the further this goes, the less control either of you keeps and the more it costs.
Why people refuse
- They do not believe the value. Often because someone quoted an online estimate rather than real comparable sales.
- They want to stay for the children, and nobody has costed out whether that is affordable on one income.
- They are not ready. The house is the last piece of a life they did not choose to end.
- They think refusing gives them leverage in the wider settlement.
The first two are solvable with information. A written valuation settles the first one more often than you would think. For the second, a lender can tell you in an afternoon whether one income carries the payment, the taxes and the insurance, which turns a fear into a fact.
The third reason deserves patience
Sometimes the refusal is grief, not strategy. It is worth naming that gently, because pushing harder against grief only makes it dig in. I have had sellers who needed six weeks before they could talk about listing, and the sale went perfectly well when they were ready. Six weeks is not usually the difference between a good outcome and a bad one.
What I can do while you disagree
I can give you both the same written valuation, so neither of you is negotiating against a number the other one does not accept. I can price the buyout alongside the sale, so you can compare the two properly. And I can communicate with both of you and both attorneys in the same email, so nothing I say to one of you is a surprise to the other.
You are allowed to disagree about the house. What helps is disagreeing about the same set of facts.
6 minute read · Written by Holly Marie Thomson, Realtor®