Boynton Beach Divorce: Keeping a Condo You're Not Allowed to Rent

Before either spouse agrees to take a Boynton condo or villa in exchange for other assets, someone should read the declaration, the rules, and the recent minutes. What you are looking for is specific: whether leasing is permitted and under what conditions, whether there is a waiting period or a cap, whether the association has approved or is contemplating a special assessment, and whether the community's reserves and any pending litigation are likely to affect financing for future buyers.

Those four answers determine whether the unit is an asset or a recurring liability. A settlement that treats it as worth its last comparable sale, when it cannot be rented and cannot be financed by a buyer, is a settlement that has quietly transferred value from one spouse to the other. Neither attorney will necessarily catch it, because it lives in association documents rather than in a financial affidavit.

For many Boynton couples the cleanest outcome is to convert the unit rather than allocate it. Selling produces a number both parties can divide, ends the dues, taxes, insurance, and assessment exposure, and removes an asset whose restrictions neither spouse controls. It also avoids the awkward scenario where one spouse holds a unit they cannot use, cannot let, and cannot readily sell, while still being financially connected to a building governed by other people's decisions.

Where the building is outside conventional lending, cash buyers are effectively the entire market, and reaching several of them at once matters more than usual. A competitive process on a restricted unit does not produce a retail number, but it produces the real one — and in a divorce, the real number early beats an optimistic number that fails to materialize a year after the judgment.