My question involves divorce in the State of: Iowa
I was with my ex girlfriend for 9 years, we purchased a property together 3 years ago. She had been cheating on me with a friend of mine, and then was seeing another guy when I decided to move out. My original plan was to try and buy her out of the property but that is not possible at this time.
When I moved out I took my clothes, my old truck, and that was about it. We have 40 acres, a house, machine shed, and large finished garage. She has everything we owned including my furniture, big screen tv, brand new zero turn $3,000 lawn mower that I still owe money on, tools, a couple of executive desks and office chairs that were once in my office, meat saw and grinder, and several other things.
We have now been separated for about 10 months, I told her I was coming to get my mower a couple of weeks ago, sent her a message that I was coming today, and when I got there nobody was there. She has since moved the other guy in and he refused to answer the door. My mower is in the machine shed which she has locked. I called the sheriff and even though I am still on the deed and mortgage he refused to let me go into the shed or remove anything from the property even though I could show the credit card statement that is in my name alone for the mower. It appears that I have been evicted from my own property and apparently have no right to get any of my things. They have let the property go down the tubes, the grass was knee high in the yard, animal crap all over the patio, trash bags ripped open with trash and pop cans falling out of them on the patio, and the last time I was in the house she had locked several cats in the house for over a week while she went out of town and the smell was so bad we were unable to move my bed and dresser out.
Am I missing something here? She cheats on me, I'm forced to move out of a property I'm a co-owner of, and she gets to keep 100% of all of our property? Oh yeah, not to mention she barely worked a day the entire 9 years we were together. Do I not have any rights at all? Do I have to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers just to be able to even step foot on my own property?
She told the sheriff today on the phone that I wasn't allowed on the property, how can they stop me from going to my own house with a sheriff deputy?
Obviously I'm calling a lawyer first thing in the morning to figure out what I can do, I thought I was being nice by letting her keep the mower so that she could maintain the property after I was gone but it's obvious they don't even use it. This is a $165,000 property that she has let go and is destroying. She has not been able to keep up the mortgage payments and the bank has started foreclosure however she was able to file a delay of foreclosure claiming agricultural purposes which is a bunch of nonsense.
Since she's decided to be this way I'm debating moving back onto the property, after all I am still on the deed and mortgage and the guy she has shacked up in there is not, don't I have a little more authority over what happens on that property than him?

