An Uncontested Divorce When One Spouse Keeps the Marital Home and the Mortgage Stays Joint

This couple had been married for roughly a decade and living apart for several years when they decided to make it official. They had no children, so the case came down to dividing a handful of assets and debts and deciding who stayed responsible for the house.

One spouse kept the marital home, and the other agreed to give up any claim to it without a buyout. The settlement agreement required the spouse leaving the home to sign a quitclaim deed within thirty days after the Final Judgment, and it required the spouse keeping the home to pay the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, and association assessments on time. Because only a lender can release a borrower from a mortgage, the existing loan stayed in both names with no refinance deadline. To protect the departing spouse, the agreement added an indemnity for any loss or credit damage from the property, a right to ask for written proof every few months that the mortgage, taxes, and insurance were current, and a duty to give prompt notice of any default or foreclosure threat. The quitclaim deed moves title only, and the agreement says so in plain language so that both spouses understood the difference before signing.

The rest of the agreement was short. Each spouse kept the car in their own name and agreed to sign any title paperwork within thirty days, each kept their own retirement and individual bank accounts, the couple's joint checking and savings accounts stayed joint, one spouse took responsibility for a credit card in their own name, both waived alimony, each paid their own attorney's fees, and the filing spouse covered the court costs.

Before anything was signed, the firm raised a question about which address the filing spouse should swear to, since the driver's license and the intake form showed different addresses during the six-month residency period that F.S. 61.021 requires before filing. The spouses confirmed their situation by email, and both signed the full packet over video with a Florida remote online notary on the day the review email went out. The packet was filed with the court the next day, the proposed Final Judgment was submitted once the case number and judge were assigned, and the judge entered it the same day it was submitted, without a hearing, three days after filing. The spouses then received a closing email summarizing the deadlines that still applied to them.