Weston Divorce: Selling the House When One Spouse Is Overseas

The mechanics are more routine than people expect. Title companies handle mail-away closing packages, and Florida recognizes remote online notarization, so a spouse in another country can generally execute closing documents without flying back. Where a particular document requires it, signing before a US consular officer is an established alternative, and a power of attorney — properly drafted and, where required, apostilled — can cover situations where neither of those is workable.

What matters is arranging it early rather than in the last week. Consular appointments and international courier timelines are the sort of thing that turns a two-week closing into a six-week one. Tell the closing agent at the outset where each party will be signing from, and let them build the package around it.

When a seller is a foreign person for US tax purposes, federal law requires an amount to be withheld from the sale proceeds and remitted, with the actual tax reconciled later on a return. In a divorce, this matters beyond the paperwork: if one spouse is subject to withholding and the other is not, the two of them do not net the same amount from an identical sale price, and a settlement that divides gross proceeds fifty-fifty produces an unequal result in practice.

The fix is to name it in the agreement — whether the split applies before or after withholding, who is responsible for filings, and how any refund is allocated once the return is filed. Your closing agent handles the mechanics and a tax adviser handles the calculation; the settlement just needs to reflect that the two sides may not be symmetrical.