Q: If you put your kid on your house with yours after your spouse passed is there anyway to get their name off now?
I am remarried now and would like to sell my home and get another one with my new spouse. When my first wife passed my daughter had me put her name on my house along with mine so if I passed. I had no idea putting her name on it meant I was giving her half ownership. She refuses to sign her name off on the house that I worked my whole life to pay off. Is there any legal way to take her name off of it?
A: The legal way would be to have her sign it over to you. You are right, you gave her half the house when you put her name on it. One aspect of ownership is the obligation to pay taxes. You can start billing her for taxes and maybe she will take her name off the house if she has to pay for it. The other thing you can do is to ask the Court to partition the property by sale, which would allow you to sell it but 1/2 the proceeds would be going to her and to you. Another option would be to try and get a home equity loan on the home, and take out all the equity then sell it, so that when it was sold there wouldn't be much in the way of proceeds. This is why a trust is so much better suited for estate planning than joint ownership.
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