My husband and I want to separate and buy a condo for him to live in. We are short on cash so we need to buy this condo as a primary residence putting only 5% down. The underwriters are requiring that we have a recorded separation agreement in order to approve this as a primary residence and not a rental property. Can we draw up a simple separation agreement and have it recorded ourselves? What are the dangers of this? The other alternative is a free trader agreement and I don’t know what impact that may have in the future on us. We are using marital funds to purchase the condo and want all of our assets to be marital assets until we decided how to split everything. We don’t want to rush and make all the detail decisions on a separation agreement before we close on our condo next week. But how can we have a separation agreement if we are not separated yet?
I would not want to rush into a separation agreement. It is possible to draft one yourself, but if I were doing it myself, I would want either a consultation to discuss the contents or a review of the proposed agreement to make sure I covered everything.
Case law allows you to enter a separation agreement pending the divorce. This is a delicate area of law and again, I would advise a consultation to discuss this. I would also not advise signing a free trader agreement without a separation agreement.