A Georgia court enforces the mortgage terms your divorce decree contains, not the ones it leaves out, so the decree should say who pays, whether the loan must be refinanced, and by when.
If the Decree Says Nothing About the Loan
In Thompson v. Thompson, 243 Ga. 719 (1979), a jury awarded the wife the home but said nothing about the husband’s loan on it, and the trial court ruled he was not liable for that debt. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed: neither spouse was “personally obligated by the divorce decree to pay the indebtedness on the house,” and paying the installments alone gave neither spouse a right to recover them from the other. But it directed that language relieving him of the loan be struck, because the decree did not release him from the lender, which kept “whatever rights it may have under the loan instruments.”
Refinancing Is Not Automatic
In Blount v. Blount, 907 S.E.2d 719 (Ga. App. 2024), the decree gave the husband the house and ordered him to pay the mortgage, which was in the wife’s name and ran until 2042, and to hold her harmless, but did not require him to refinance. She called that an indefinite obligation that hurt her credit. The Court of Appeals found no abuse of discretion; the arrangement carried “a clear directive with a finite (albeit lengthy) duration.”
Set a Deadline
In Arthur v. Arthur, 293 Ga. 63 (2013), the wife kept the house and was to pay the husband $20,000 for his interest when she refinanced it or, failing that, whenever it was sold. Since she might never do either, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed that part: “An obligation of a party relating to the equitable division of property may not be extended for an indefinite period of time.”
A deadline the decree does contain is enforced as written, as our post on who pays the mortgage after a Georgia divorce explains.
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!