Home Equity Divorce Calculator

How it works

When a marriage ends and one spouse wants to keep the house, the money question is narrow. What does the person leaving get paid for their share of the home equity?

A divorce divides the equity, not the value. The mortgage is a lien on the property, and somebody still has to repay it. So subtract the loan balance from a value you both accept, then split what is left.

That split leaves the part people forget. The spouse staying has to produce the buyout in cash, and few people have that much sitting in savings. In practice they refinance, and the formula for the new loan is the old balance plus the buyout:

• V: the home's value, ideally from an appraisal both sides accept
• M: the mortgage balance still owed on the property
• V − M: the equity, the only part a divorce can divide
• S: the leaving spouse's share of that equity, as a decimal
• (V − M) × S: the buyout, the money the keeping spouse owes them
• New loan ÷ V: the loan-to-value (LTV) a lender judges you on, usually capped near 80% on a cash-out refinance

The defaults produce a $310,000 mortgage at 77.5% loan-to-value. Here is where that comes from. A $400,000 home carrying a $220,000 mortgage holds $180,000 of equity, so a 50/50 split makes each share $90,000.

Pay the leaving spouse that $90,000 and the new loan sits under the usual 80% limit, but not by much. Sell instead and 7% of selling costs takes $28,000 off the top, leaving $152,000 to divide, or $76,000 each. Put in your own appraisal figure, mortgage balance and agreed share, then read both rows before you negotiate.

✓ Every result is checked against independent reference math. See how we test the calculators →

How to use this calculator

1. Enter the home's value, ideally from an appraisal both spouses accept rather than an online estimate.
2. Enter the mortgage balance still owed today, taken from your latest statement, not the original loan amount.
3. Set the leaving spouse's share of the equity, which starts at 50%, to whatever the divorce agreement or court order says.
4. Read the buyout figure and the new loan, then check the loan-to-value against the 80% limit most lenders apply.
5. Compare the buyout with the sale row, which is already net of selling costs, before deciding which one to push for.

A worked example: buying out a $400,000 house

You are keeping the house and buying your ex out of it. It appraised at $400,000 and the mortgage still has $220,000 on it, so the equity, the only part there is to divide, is $180,000. Split down the middle, each share is $90,000, and that is the check you write.

The buyout is the easy half. To raise it you refinance the $220,000 you already owe plus the $90,000 you now owe them, so the new loan is $310,000 against a $400,000 house. That is a 77.5% loan-to-value, just under the 80% most cash-out refinances stop at, and you must qualify for all of it on one income.

The alternative: selling instead pays 7% in costs and leaves each of you $76,000. The buyout hands them $14,000 more than a sale would, because nobody pays an agent.

Now move one number. If your share is 40% rather than half, you owe them $108,000, the new loan climbs to $328,000, and the loan-to-value hits 82%. The result turns red, because many standard cash-out programs stop before there, though a buyout ordered in a decree can sometimes be written as a rate-and-term loan with more room, so ask before assuming.

Without some refinance your ex stays on the mortgage. Put your own value, balance, and agreed share in above.

How do you divide home equity in a divorce?

Start with what the property is worth. Then take off every debt secured against it, not just the first mortgage. What survives that subtraction is the home equity a divorce can actually divide.

• Every lien comes off first: a second mortgage, a home equity line of credit (HELOC), unpaid property tax, or a judgment lien left by civil litigation. All of those get paid before either spouse sees money.
• State law sets the frame: community property states usually treat what you acquired during the marriage as owned equally. Equitable distribution states divide it fairly, which is not always evenly.

Separate property is where the arithmetic gets argued. Equity traced to a down payment made before the marriage may not be marital property at all, and the same goes for an inheritance one spouse kept apart.

Tracing that money back is a question of state law and paperwork. A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can override the default rules, and a court will usually follow one that was properly signed.

Most couples settle the percentage in mediation rather than at a hearing, because a contested divorce costs more than the gap being argued over. Whatever mediation or the court lands on goes into the split field here.

Being off the deed is not being off the mortgage

This is the most expensive misunderstanding in a divorce, and it catches people who did everything else right. The deed and the mortgage are separate contracts doing separate jobs.

• The deed says who owns the property: a quitclaim deed signs your ownership over to your ex spouse, and it takes minutes.
• The mortgage says who owes the money: that loan is a contract with a lender who was never part of your divorce and never agreed to release anybody.

So you can sign the house away completely and stay liable for every payment on it. The lien stays on the property, and the debt keeps showing on your credit report. That debt also counts against your debt-to-income ratio when you borrow for a place of your own.

A divorce agreement ordering your ex to pay does not bind the lender, who never signed it. Enforcing it later means fresh civil litigation against somebody who has already run out of money. So what actually takes your name off the loan?

Refinancing in their name alone, or selling. A release of liability or a loan assumption occasionally works, and the CFPB's Ask CFPB answers explain what a mortgage servicer can be asked for.

Most loans allow neither. So put a dated refinancing deadline in the settlement, with a sale as the automatic consequence if that date passes.

Can the new loan clear underwriting on one income?

Refinancing is the step most likely to fail, because it asks for more from less. The loan grows, since it now carries the buyout on top of the old balance. Meanwhile the household income behind it has just been cut roughly in half.

• The 80% cap: most cash-out refinancing stops near 80% loan-to-value, and the result above flags it when the new mortgage crosses that line.
• Debt to income: a bigger payment on one salary can fail a lender's review even with plenty of equity behind it. Equity does not qualify anyone for a loan.

Income does, and support cuts both ways. Alimony or child support you receive may count as income if the order runs long enough. Support you pay usually counts against your debt-to-income ratio, so ask a lender instead of assuming.

Then there is the rate. Giving up a cheap fixed rate mortgage for today's rates can cost more over a full term than the buyout does, and refinancing restarts the amortization schedule as well.

If the buyout leaves less than 20% equity, private mortgage insurance (PMI) gets added to the bill too. Price the payment on the new loan and get a real pre-approval before you sign an agreement that promises a buyout.

How do you keep the house without refinancing?

Sometimes refinancing is not available, either because rates moved or because one income will not carry the loan. Three alternatives come up in most divorce negotiations, and each of them leaves something unresolved.

A loan assumption is the cleanest. The keeping spouse takes over the existing mortgage on its original terms, which protects a cheap rate. Most conventional loans block it, though some government-backed loans allow it with lender approval and a full credit check.

A deferred sale is the second route. Both names stay on the mortgage for a fixed period, often until the youngest child finishes school, and the property is sold at the end of it.

That arrangement only works if the settlement is specific. It has to name who makes the mortgage payment and who covers the property tax and homeowners insurance held in escrow.

It also has to say what triggers the sale. A weak real estate market on the agreed date can wipe out the equity you were splitting.

The third route is to buy your ex out with other assets rather than borrowed money. Trading retirement accounts or savings against their share shrinks the buyout, and a smaller buyout can remove the need to refinance at all.

A HELOC looks like an easier way to raise the cash, but lenders rarely approve one on a single income right after a divorce. Homeowners aged 62 and over sometimes fund a buyout with a reverse mortgage instead, which pays the leaving spouse with no monthly payment due.

That reverse mortgage adds a lien that grows over time, and it complicates estate planning down to what the house is worth in probate, so run it past a lawyer first. None of the three gets a name off the note, which is why lenders keep steering people back toward refinancing or a sale.

Agree on the value before you argue about the split

Every result here rests on one input: what the property is worth. Get that number wrong and the fairest split percentage still hands somebody the short end.

• Use an appraisal, not a website: an online estimate is a model guessing from public records, and it can miss a real house by tens of thousands either way.
• Watch which way the incentives run: the spouse keeping the property wants a low value, because it shrinks the buyout. The one leaving wants a high one.

That pull is not bad faith, it is arithmetic. So the figure should come from a licensed real estate appraiser both sides agreed on in advance. In a contested divorce, two appraisals averaged tend to cost less than one long argument about a single number.

Then compare the two rows people rarely read together. At the defaults the buyout is $90,000 while a sale nets each side $76,000, so the leaving spouse is $14,000 better off being bought out.

The formula divides gross equity, and 7% of selling costs never comes off a buyout. The spouse who keeps the house pays the real estate agent, the title insurance and the closing costs later, whenever they sell. That gap is real money, and it belongs in the negotiation instead of being discovered a year afterwards.