Kim Pauley: Can You Keep the House After Divorce?

Most married couples hold their largest asset in the same place, which is the house. Deciding what happens to it turns out to be a school question, a community question, a budget question and a lending question at the same time, and Kim Pauley says that is exactly why nobody should be answering it alone.

Kim Pauley is a certified divorce lending professional with a mortgage lender serving New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. She is also a lawyer by training, a former civil litigator, though she is careful that this is not the hat she wears with clients. What the legal background gives her is a sense of what a client should be asking their own attorney. The divorce lending certification came after she noticed how many of her clients were separating and how much she did not yet know about what they were walking through.

In this episode, Kim explains a team model that will sound familiar to anyone who has heard Chris and Lisa describe the legs of a table: an attorney or mediator, a divorce financial planner, and a lender, each checking the others. She starts every engagement with one question, which is what your goal is, and she expects that a person coming out of a controlling relationship may need months to answer it. From the goal come the scenarios, and from the scenarios come the specific terms that have to be negotiated into a separation agreement while there is still time.

The conversation gets specific about the terms themselves. How much spousal support you need in order to qualify for the mortgage you want, and the conditions attached to it before a lender will count it: consistent amounts, deposited on schedule, ordered rather than voluntary, and continuing for a defined period. What can be used as income when somebody has been raising children rather than drawing a paycheck, from bank statements and business accounts to a retirement account received in the division of assets. The automatic orders that stop either spouse selling or spending during a case. And why the consultation is free, since a mortgage professional is only paid at closing.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a lender belongs in the conversation at the start of a divorce, not the end
• What a certified divorce lending professional does, and why the consultation costs nothing
• How spousal support has to be structured before a lender can count it as income
• Qualifying without a traditional paycheck: bank statements, a small business, retirement assets
• The automatic orders that freeze big financial moves once a case is filed
• Starting from your goal, then working backward to what the agreement has to say
• The financial moves to avoid making before you talk to a professional
• How to find a divorce lending professional if you are outside her states

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What a certified divorce lending professional actually does
4:00 The team approach, and the house sitting in the middle of it
6:00 Starting from the goal instead of the numbers
8:00 Automatic orders, and why most brokers wait until it is over
10:00 Getting involved early, and why it costs nothing
12:00 Structuring spousal support so a lender will count it
16:00 A legal background, and knowing what to ask your attorney
18:00 Qualifying without a paycheck, and what counts as income
20:00 Moves to avoid, and the bar-stool council problem
23:00 Finding someone like her outside New York

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.