Heislerville, NJ Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

Proceeding down the path you are pursuing will be the quickest way to get your wife to file a domestic violence complaint against you and having your world turned further upset down. You are married and you and your wife have a car with payments on it. As part of a divorce, one of you will end up with that vehicle and presumably the payment obligations associated with it as well. So, instead of stressing out and looking to create unnecessary issues for yourself, go meet with a family law specialist and get educated on your rights and your responsibilities as part of the divorce process as opposed to threatening your wife about her driving the car. Let me give you an insight – you acknowledged that you and your wife purchased a vehicle in 2019 and after its purchase, your wife has been driving it and now that you have decided to divorce her, you feel she should no longer be permitted to drive it and you are trying to figure out how to take it away from her and you are trying to rationalize your view. After being a family law specialist for the past 34 years, I can promise you that if you try and take that car away from your wife, you will be looking at a domestic violence setting, where your wife will state that you are engaging in harassment type behavior and took her car away from her to punish her and I can promise you that 96.275% of the family law judges in the state will view your actions as harassment and if so, impose permanent restrictions on you and more likely than not, require you to immediately return the car to your wife as well. So, meet with a family law attorney, get educated and do things more constructively in your divorce, so that there are fewer consequences to your actions. 

You might be able to modify a child custody arrangement, but you cannot modify the divorce. As a matter of fact, it would be highly unusual to modify a divorce arrangement once it has been finalized and the appeal period has run.

If the title to your house is currently in both names, I will be shocked if the mortgage lender is willing to let you refinance the mortgage in your name alone. It is not uncommon for people to put the title and mortgage in one persons name because the other party has poor credit. If the purpose of refinancing the mortgage is to get a lower interest rate AND the mortgage lender says that title needs to be in your name alone as well, then sign something with your spouse, saying that the transfer of title from joint name into your name alone is purely for purposes of getting a lower rate on the mortgage and will not effect his ownership interest in it. Then, in the future, if you do decide to go forward with a divorce and want to keep the house, title and the mortgage is already in your name alone and at that point, you and he can figure out how you buy out his equity interest in the property ( cash buyout / trasnfer of other retirement monies, etc) but you will not need to refinance the mortgage again nor incur additional costs for keeping the house.