The original divorce housing strategy platform · Est. 2011
Before you sign, someone should check whether it works. Usually nobody does.
The Mortgage Capacity Strategy Review is about twenty minutes with a Certified Divorce Lending Professional who reads the terms actually on the table and tells you what a lender will do with them.
It is free. It is not a framework, and it is not a course. It is an answer, while the agreement can still be changed.
What you leave with
Four things, in plain language, that you can take back to your attorney.
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Whether the numbers hold
Whether the person keeping the house can qualify on the terms this settlement creates. Not whether they qualified last year as half of a couple. On these terms, with these debts, on this income.
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What the deadline really is
Calculated from when the documents will actually exist, rather than chosen because ninety days sounds reasonable. Those two numbers are rarely the same.
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What releases the departing spouse
Which mechanism removes them from the loan, and whether that mechanism is named in the draft or merely assumed. Assumed is the common answer, and it is the expensive one.
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What a buyout can be financed at
Not the arithmetic figure. The figure a lender will advance to that specific person, which is the only one that pays anybody.
What you will actually be asked
This is a conversation about your situation and where your leverage is. It is not an application. Nobody pulls your credit, and nobody asks you for documents.
- Where you are in the process. Considering separation, in negotiation, in mediation, or holding a draft that is close to final. The stage decides how much can still be changed, which decides what is worth your time today.
- What you want the outcome to look like. Staying in the home. Moving and buying something of your own. Getting your name off the mortgage entirely. Those are three different strategies, and knowing which one you are actually after comes before any numbers.
- What your situation looks like right now. Broad strokes. Who is on the loan, roughly what the income picture is, whether children and a school district are part of the decision, what else is on the table besides the house. Enough to see the shape of it.
- What is still open for negotiation. Usually more than people think. Which asset offsets which. How a buyout is structured and when it funds. Who carries which debt. What the timeline actually is. These are the terms with real room in them, and they are the ones settlements tend to set out of habit instead of on purpose.
- Where the current direction runs into a wall. If the plan on the table will not hold up once a lender looks at it, you want to hear that now, while the language can still be written differently. That is the whole reason this happens before you sign rather than after.
- What your next step should be. Sometimes it is that you are in good shape and should keep going. Sometimes it is one specific change to take back to your attorney. Sometimes it is the full written analysis. You leave knowing which one applies to you, and why.
Nothing here is a sales conversation. It is the orientation that should happen before anyone starts drafting terms around a house, applied at the only point where it can still change the outcome.
Who you will actually be talking to
A licensed mortgage professional who holds the CDLP® designation, issued by the Divorce Lending Association. I founded the association in 2014, after my own divorce, because this analysis did not exist and I could see what its absence was costing people.
The designation carries continuing education, written Practice Standards and a Code of Ethics. It can be suspended, and it can be revoked. That last part is the part worth knowing, because a credential that cannot be taken away is not really a credential.
Standing is a matter of record, not a matter of claim. Every listing in our register shows current certification standing and an NMLS number that links straight to the federal public licensing database, so you can check the person independently before you speak to them. If someone tells you they hold this designation and you would like that confirmed, call us with their name and we will tell you.
How it happens
You send a short form. No payment, no credit pull, no documents to gather in advance.
We match you with a certified professional licensed for your situation and your state.
You talk. Most of it is you describing what has been proposed, and them telling you what a lender will do with it.
If your attorney or your mediator wants to be on the call, bring them. Those are usually the better calls.
What this is not
Worth saying plainly, because people arrive braced for something else.
- Not a loan application. Nothing is pulled and nothing is submitted anywhere.
- Not a mortgage sales call. Plenty of these reviews end with no loan of any kind.
- Not legal advice. Your attorney owns the language. We tell you what the language has to survive.
- Not a course, and not a framework. You are not being taught a method. You are being given an answer.
- Not the full Report. That is a separate, fee based document, and most people never need it.
- Not a decision you have to make on the call. Take it away. Take it to your attorney.
Sometimes the answer is no
And it is far better to hear it now than at the refinance.
The version I have watched too many times goes like this. Someone fights for the house for eight months. They trade away retirement assets to keep it, because in the moment that felt worth it. They win it in the settlement. Then the refinance comes and the numbers were never there, so they sell anyway, from a weaker position, with less time and considerably more in legal fees behind them.
If the answer is no, that is not a failed review. That is the review working. You have just saved a year, a great deal of money, and a second loss at the end of it. And if the answer is yes, you go into the negotiation knowing it, which changes how you negotiate everything else.
What comes after, if you need it
The Divorce Mortgage Planning Report™ is the full analytical document, built on Mortgage Capacity Mapping™. It is fee based, and it is recommended only when the situation genuinely calls for it.
- Property Feasibility Analysis
- Income Qualification Structuring
- Debt Allocation Impact Modeling
- Equity and Cash Flow Solutions Engineering
Most people do not need it. The ones who do usually have a business, a complicated income picture, or a buyout large enough that the structure of it decides the outcome.
Find out before you sign
It costs nothing, it takes about twenty minutes, and it is the only point in this process where the answer can still be changed.