Why Does She Get More?
By Michael
***On Tuesday we shared a post from Bethany about how she and Lucas managed to own more of the house than anyone else. Today, Michael weighs in with his perspective on how things are never fair, even when you really want them to be.***

When our children were small they were obsessed with fairness. Raising 5 kids meant there was a lot of comparison and complaint that someone else seemed to get a little more than the others. When it came to buying a house with two of our children and their spouses we didn’t see this coming.
When we were arranging for our financing we found out that mortgage lenders would only allow us to put four names on the title. For the purpose of the application we chose the four that would provide the maximum financial impression. Thus Hope and I along with Eric and Bethany ended up being the official names holding title.
This caused a bit of concern because we did not want this to be just a four way split, we wanted each person to have an equal share. Upon checking with our lawyer, we were assured that really it did not matter that there were only four names on title if we were all married couples. The simple truth is that marital law will trump real estate law. In other words, what belongs to one spouse is equally shared with the other spouse no matter whose name it is in.
When it came to the day of closing we were surprised by the fact that things did not turn our exactly as fair as we thought. Sitting around our lawyer’s table we were shocked to find out the Bethany and Luc actually got more of the house then the rest of us. Turns out that Hope and I got 33.33%; Eric and Sarah got 33.33%; but Bethany and Lucas got a whopping 33.34%.
“Hey why does she get more? “ Actually no one said anything of the sort. We just laughed and it has become a great joke that the youngest, least established pair have the biggest share of this “One Big House”!
