09/01/2026
A client tells you she just needs to keep the house. It usually arrives before the intake is even finished, and it sounds like a clear instruction rather than a question.
The Divorce Lending Association's September briefing argues that it is the wrong question, and I think the argument is right.
Not because keeping the home is a bad outcome. Because "how do I keep the house" has a binary answer, and a yes gets recorded as a win. The briefing's point is that yes is not one answer. It is at least three:
Yes, you qualify. That is not the same as yes, you can carry it. Yes, you can keep it. Here is what keeping it costs. Yes, and here is what the same dollars would have done instead.
In my experience only the first one gets tested before signing. The other two show up in year two.
The better question the piece proposes is forward-facing: how does this house fit into the life I am about to live? That one does not resolve to a yes or a no. It resolves to a design, and it opens four inquiries that determine whether a settlement holds.
Worth reading if you have housing questions open on a current file. It also covers how to raise the reframe in the room without it sounding like a refusal.
https://divorcebriefings.com/4yedAmL
If you have a file where the housing question is still open, I would rather look at it now than after the decree is entered.
