My question involves a marriage in the state of: Ohio
I wanted to post a reply instead of a new topic but the thread was closed since it was inactive since 2016 so I will post the original and the updates.
Original question 2016 -
My wife and I own a house in Ohio that we lived in and a duplex in Ohio as well. She took our son and moved to Kentucky in a rental property because she wanted to be far from me and move closer to her friends, but she still wanted to be close enough where I could visit my son. ( about 4 hours away ) We are trying our best to keep everything out of the courts. With our homes we owe no mortgages, we paid cash for both of them and we have about $3,000 or $3,500 in credit card debt.
So my question is, I have offered her $22,000 cash ( when I get it ) and I will take all our credit card debt if she will sign off that she has no interest in these properties. We paid $19,000 cash for the house we live in and $12,000 for the duplex, so $15,500 would be half but I am trying to be fair to her. The reason why I want her to have no interest in either properties is I want to fix this house up and sell it for around 70 grand and make a nice 20k profit and it'll be like the divorce never happened almost financially for me. I would be okay with her owning half the duplex if she actually helped me manage it and fix it up. But I am the one doing all the work, hiring people and dealing with the tenants and I kind of find that a bit unfair that I do all the work and she is entitled to half the income from it. Therefore I want to buy her out of that as well. I know she's already talked to lawyers, I haven't and I have no plans on getting a lawyer. She seems to like the 22k offer and me taking the debt but she wants her lawyer to look over it.
Now what I want to know is can she force the sale of this place before I fix it up and the same with the duplex? or can I buy her out? do I have to pay 22k all at once or can it be over a period of a year or two? Or since the houses are only worth 15,500 divided in half should I offer that or less due to our debt or what should I do?
We also have a son but I pay child support on my own and we are not going to court for that just for our assets. We only own the 2 homes and have like $50 in our bank account right now lol
Update below -
I feel like I should update this and also add a few things. We're still going through the process almost two years later. A few of the updates I'd like to add here and see if they will help the situation or hurt the situation at all.
To start from the beginning, I purchased the duplex for $12,000 and the SFH for $19,000. So if you were to cut both of those in half the values would be $15,500, while we were married, I did fix up the bottom of the duplex, but not the top. After the divorce, I started to fix up the top part. We purchased the duplex during our marriage, but it was only in my name. I was over there 5-6 days a week sometimes with contractor's working on the property, she only set foot on the property two times, once when we saw it and once to meet the tenants. The tenants were always very bad, some months they didn't pay at all, other months they would pay half, I ended up selling the property and being in the red about $1,500 on the upstairs tenants and $1,300 on the downstairs tenants. The upstairs were only there 4 months and I was broke and so I was happy to get any money they were willing to give, $50 here, $70 here it was never full rent but they never complained although their furnace didn't work and their bathtub didn't drain properly. The downstairs was fully rentable upstairs wasn't and I just didn't think I'd get myself in that situation. Not a slumlord just was dealing with a lot of bad financial situations at the time and couldn't afford to fix anything else upstairs as I had mold issues downstairs I was trying to resolve under the threat of the downstairs tenants suing me.
Needless to say I made some bad decisions with the duplex, that's far in the past, I unloaded the property early 2017, which brings me to another issue. I never told my ex wife I sold it, I randomly gave her $3,000 which I said was towards the divorce settlement, she was happy with it and never said a thing. Of course she got anxious for the rest of the money, I invested the rest of the money in fixing up the SFH, I made her a proposal, if she would come up here to Ohio to help me fix the SFH we would split the profits on the sale of the house 50/50, I had an appraisal after I originally posted the first post and it came in at $28,000 but needed a furnace fixed and outside grounding and other electrical stuff done in the amount of $1,200 before a sale could go through, and a furnace ran about $2,000, so I took off $3,000 off that for the repairs needed before it could be sold and came to a valuation of $25,000 because she was not going to put 1 single dollar towards the property, so it was up to me to put the $3,200 up if we were going to be able to sell it.
I got $26,800 for the duplex, but I also want to mention I put in a lot of money even after our divorce was finalized into the duplex, I put over $6,000 upstairs in fixing plumbing, new water heater, new carpet, paint, drywall fixed, new doors, new kitchen and bathroom floors and toilets and showers. A lot of that came in the form of debt that I took on to get that taken care of. I ran my Lowes card up to $2,500 at one point and other cards were high as well. Plus to begin with the divorce I agreed to take on the debt as mentioned in the first post as part of the divorce.
So after selling the duplex, I ended up fixing the house up 100% under the agreement with my ex that the money would not be for her other than what we've already agreed on. So now the house is worth around $55,000-$60,000 but here is the issue, I think I agreed on giving her too much and she wants the money now, my mom has the money and said she'd give it to me to pay her off, but I think I offered her too much originally and I want to offer her less because she gives me no rights with my son and treats me like trash, no one has treated me so badly in my life and I can't deal with such a hateful person. My plan is to go with cash in a few days and say take $17,000 or take me to court. ( 20,000 total, 17k now and 3k from before )
I guess my questions are here are - how good are my chances of fighting this in court and talking over all this with some friends, they seem to think I might possibly have a few outs but this is why I wanted to come here and get a few opinions
I met her when I was 15, she was 22, we got engaged when I was 16 and all this was obviously way too young for me, she was a Peruvian girl, and at 15 no one truly knows what love is, I was too young and not ready for all this, and she was at 22. Obviously looking back, I know how this was a huge mistake, then I got married to her at 18, I had almost no money and nothing, but my mom helped her get here, she paid for a lawyer, my mom paid for her plane ticket, my mom literally did everything, then she loaned us $11,000 to get our start in real estate, which I turned into the duplex and the SFH I bought, but we never paid my mom back and we have no proof that she loaned us the money at this point because a lot of it was in the form of credit card debt/cash advances in my moms name that she ended up paying off for us, and the other cash was handed to us in person, she took out around $7,000 from her bank account in 2010 along with the other debt my mom helped us out with and that gave us our start, but we never repaid her that $11,000. My mom needed $1,500 in 2012 and I gave it to her without my ex wife's permission and she found out and had a huge fit and demanded my mom give us the $1,500 back even though she loaned us over 11k. Kind of shows you the kind of witch I'm dealing with, but I was married to her and said fine okay and my mom returned the money.
Can any of this information help me at all? could I say I was too young for all this? she used me for a green card? I know a lot of this sounds silly, but I was young and made a lot of mistakes and now I am just trying to figure out what is the best option for me to do at this point? and out of the $20,000 or $23,000 whatever it may be, should she be responsible for paying my mom back at least half for the 11,000 even if it's been too long to prove it?
Any advice helps, I'm trying here. Thanks!
Edit: Not sure if this is something that would help at all or if it's just something that gets on my nerves but she has full custody of our son and she has taken him out of the country without my permission, I knew about it but I never agreed he could go, then she took him across country to California and to Missouri with her boyfriend, a man I have never met, I was near him once and he didn't even bother to get out of the car to talk to me or introduce himself, I tried to and my ex screamed for me to stay in the car. Yet this man is taking my son on trips to California without me even knowing. It'd be great to find out my son is missing and cops are asking me where he was last and I say he was at his house and come to find out he was last seen in California and his dad doesn't even know?

