I can really relate to your post. It sounds as if you are getting good advice. My husband is a King in manipulation. He knows just how to twist everything. I am being very careful. I basically talk about relationship issues only in MC and legal issues only with the attorney. It just makes me more comfortable. Be cautious and keep talking to the wise, experienced people on MB. I can't imagine not having this to turn to.

Hi Horsey. In my state, it wouldn't matter who brought the downpayment to this second house 'cuz the money from the first house would be marital income anyway. Plus, I can see where you're having trouble finding someone to trust account the money for you. Try one of these two ideas?

1) Use the money to open a joint savings account, with both signatures required for withdraw. That way, the title co is clear and has disbursed, and the money can be safely earning interest while you wait for the judges decision. Neither of you could touch it without equal agreement from the other.

2) Have the title co split the seller's proceeds in half, and give each of you a check. Take yours to the bank, but save it until the judge makes her ruling.

Remember when pjl told you the difference between the note and the deed. Yes, if your hubby purchased the first home before you were married, you would certainly not have been on the note (the legal instrument involved with paying the bank back its' money). In my state, however, once you're married, you automatically go on the deed. The deed is the instrument that conveys ownership. Once your DH sold the first house, you should have gotten 1/2 those profits, and in turn, would have put down 1/2 of the downpayment on house #2. Whether you knowingly did this or not, when hubby bought the second house, you DID put down 1/2 of the downpayment. It just happened that he had it in his pocket at that moment, but it was still, your money too.

I think he's trying to railroad you. He's trying to make you think that everything is automatically HIS, and that anything you get out of it is just due to his generosity. To that, I say, "Bull-snot!" You were an equal partner in the marriage, and since the home he purchased before the marriage is now sold, you have just as much money due from the sale of it as he does.

That's how it works in my state anyway. I live in the Southeast, in Tennessee.

That's what I told my husband yesterday, that I did contribute to that first house - he made the house payment, I did everything else, utilities, phone, cable, satelite, repairs, groceries, trips, you name it... and he turns around and thinks the house is HIS because he made the house payment.

Yup, all of a sudden yesterday I went from the 7k check he was trying to pay me off with last week (as according to HIM I had the right only to the second house that I was on the deed of, the first one I wasn't) to 90k or more being put aside in escrow - a miracle isn't it?

The attorney I hired the other day was wrong (and I faxed her yesterday telling her she just added to my misery and made a bad situation worse for her information), a few wise people on MB were right or I would have been railroaded on this. True, I can't seem to trust anyone these days and am lacking places to turn.

At least I figured out with help here the "bull snot" my husband was throwing at me. He's really playing me as an idiot, I do know that whatever he does he's up to something. Even writing the costs of his moving and storing in the title agreement - why? I asked that to the title company in an email this am, she said we'd have to have a "group" decision if it's not to be in there (well, you'd think since it's MY money too that I'd have some say - and by group, whos the group?)... well this might be the way to shut it down a few days, all the crooked realtors and my husband deserves that. The buyers can wait and my husband can sweat and pay for his own darn moving costs - or hey, since I'm paying for his, I'll go back and they can include in the title closing my costs from moving in the past year, all the trips and the horse trailer I bought too to haul a few things with right?

I'm just beat from all of this. But he's not going to "wear me down" as that's his goal I'm sure, to verbally throw junk at me, then legally and whatever means he can... For once he doesn't scare me, and I'll be there at every turn figuring out his latest games and ploys until this is over, hopefully within a few months.