What happens to your mortgage when you get divorced?

Unless protected by a trust or a prenuptial agreement, property accrued during a marriage is considered part of a marital estate, or joint property between spouses. This includes your mortgage. 

CNBC Select spoke with divorce expert Amy Colton, a Texas-based Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® and founder of Your Divorce Made Simple, about all things mortgage when untying the knot. 

A house is usually a couple's largest asset and should be one of the first joint properties on the chopping block. Divorcing couples have several options for dealing with their mortgage:

• Sell the home and use the profits to pay off the home loan
• Maintain the mortgage jointly and use the house as an investment property
• Relinquish the mortgage to one partner

"If they decide that one party is going to keep it, that person has to look at whether they can afford it,'" Colton said. 

First, the property will need to be retitled: The spouse relinquishing the house must sign a quitclaim deed to remove their name before the mortgage can be resolved. The spouse who stays in the home will likely have to requalify for the mortgage to prove they can afford the payments alone. 

Many soon-to-be-exes think that splitting a mortgage only requires a trip to the courthouse and a couple of signatures, but it's relatively complex. Selling the home is usually the simplest way to wipe your hands clean of the mortgage and your ex, according to Colton. 

A divorcing couple with a joint mortgage may choose to remove one of their names from the mortgage, leaving the other as the sole borrower. You can do this by refinancing or assuming the original mortgage. 

Many home loans do not allow for simple mortgage assumptions (removing your co-borrower's name from an existing mortgage). So, refinancing the loan into a new mortgage in one person's name is the likeliest way to go. 

Refinancing is beneficial if interest rates have gone down since you closed on the house, and often, divorce decrees require the home to be refinanced within a certain time frame, Colton explains. However, mortgage rates have been soaring, meaning your monthly payments could go up significantly if you refinance now.

You don't have to refinance immediately after a divorce and divorcing couples sometimes reach other agreements that don't require refinancing at all. Keep in mind that, in order to refinance, the spouse keeping the home will have to qualify for the new loan based on their income, credit score and other criteria.

Your home equity is the difference between its current market value and how much you owe on your mortgage. The division of home equity will likely be spelled out in your divorce agreement and it can yield a useful supply of cash to help each of you settle. 

For example, if your home is valued at $1,000,000 and you owe $500,000 on your joint mortgage, then there is $500,000 of equity in the home, and you and your partner each have $250,000 in home equity, assuming your equity is split evenly. 

"If I'm going to buy it, I've got to give my husband $250,000 from somewhere else," Colton explains. "Do we have assets from somewhere else that I can give him that qualify?" 

You could do this by turning your home equity into cash. To do so, you'll need to take out what's known as a cash-out refinance. This type of loan replaces your original mortgage with a bigger loan, and you are given the cash difference. 

Rocket Mortgage is one of our top picks for a cash-out refinance: While most lenders only allow homeowners to tap 80 to 90% of their home equity, Rocket allows borrowers with a minimum FICO score of 620 to cash out 100% of their equity.

Ally Bank is another of our top mortgage refinance lenders because it doesn't charge lender fees, which can equal up to 2% of your loan total.

Home sales are subject to federal and state taxes but if you are married and filing jointly, you can sell your primary residence the first $500,000 of equity is exempt from the capital gains tax.

If you divorce and file as a single, only the first $250,000 of home equity is exempt. Colton says this is one of the most common mistakes she sees with divorcing couples. 

Missing mortgage payments or falling delinquent can severely harm your credit score. On the flip side, making on-time mortgage payments boosts your score.

If you and your ex decide to jointly maintain a mortgage, whether as an appreciating investment or to use the home as a rental property, both of you are liable for negligent payments. So, if your ex misses several payments, even if you correctly pay your share, both of your credit scores will suffer.

Similarly, failure to pay the mortgage could lead to default and eventually foreclosure. 

"Anytime a bill doesn't get paid, you're on the hook for it," Colton said. "It's really important to monitor your credit rating during the divorce process to make sure you don't get zinged."

At CNBC Select, we work with experts who have specialized knowledge and authority based on relevant training and/or experience. For this story, we interviewed divorce expert Amy Colton, a Texas-based Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® and founder of Your Divorce Made Simple.

At CNBC Select, our mission is to provide our readers with high-quality service journalism and comprehensive consumer advice so they can make informed decisions with their money. Every mortgage article is based on rigorous reporting by our team of expert writers and editors with extensive knowledge of personal finance products. While CNBC Select earns a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links, we create all our content without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties, and we pride ourselves on our journalistic standards and ethics.

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