Do we have to sell the house in an Ohio divorce?

This is the question I am asked most often, usually in the first two minutes of a phone call, and usually by someone who has been told by a friend or a relative that the house has to go. It does not, at least not automatically. Ohio courts divide marital property fairly, and a fair division can be reached in several ways. Selling is only the most visible one.

The four options people actually use

• Sell now and divide the proceeds. The cleanest financially, and the one that ends any shared liability on the mortgage soonest.
• One of you buys the other out. You agree a value, work out each share of the equity, and one person refinances the loan into their own name.
• Both of you keep it for a defined period. Usually to let children finish a school year, with the sale date and the responsibilities written into the agreement.
• One of you keeps it and gives up something of similar value elsewhere, such as retirement funds. Your attorney will tell you whether that trade works in your case.

Every one of those options starts from the same place: a current, defensible number for the house. Not the estimate on a property website, which is generated from public records and cannot see the roof, the kitchen or the water in the basement. A real valuation, based on what comparable homes in your neighbourhood have actually sold for in recent months.

Why the number has to come first

In divorce, the house is very often the largest single asset in the marriage. Whatever number goes on it will shape the settlement, the buyout maths and, in many cases, where each of you can afford to live afterwards. If the number is wrong, everything built on top of it is wrong too, and it is usually the person who moves out who discovers it later.

I have sat at kitchen tables where two people were arguing hard about the house, and the actual disagreement turned out to be that one of them was using a figure from an online estimate and the other was using what the neighbours got in 2022. Once both of them were looking at the same written valuation, the argument stopped in about ten minutes.

What a valuation does not commit you to

Asking me what the house is worth does not list it. It does not put a sign in the yard, it does not tell anyone, and it does not start a clock. Most of the people I do this for are not ready to make a decision, and a good number of them never sell at all. That is a fine outcome. You are entitled to make this decision with real information in front of you.

If you do decide to sell

Selling during a divorce is different from an ordinary sale in a few practical ways. Both of you normally have to sign, so decisions take longer and need to be agreed in advance. Showings have to work around two schedules and sometimes two households. Communication has to be even-handed, which is why I copy both parties and both attorneys on everything rather than becoming anyone's messenger.

Handled well, it is a straightforward transaction. Handled badly, it becomes another front in the argument. Most of my job in these sales is making sure it stays the first thing.