SPARC Forums

Hello all,

Five years after going through the financial (as well as emotional) trauma of divorce and becoming a non custodial father (NCP), I'm finally ready to buy a home.

I have excellent credit, a stable job and enough assets to pay off all my consumer debt and make a down payment.

The ONLY potential obstacle to my qualifying for an FHA-backed mortgage is my child support obligation (CSO).

Some online calculators suggest that lenders treat a CSO exactly as a consumer debt obligation.  

If lenders will in fact treat my $1100 CSO obligation equivalenty to a consumer debt,   there's no way I'll qualify for a mortgage. My CSO alone will nearly max out my allowable "debt ratio."

Has anyone else gone through this process? Can anyone confirm that a CSO does restrict the ability to qualify for a mortgage...and is treated exactly the same as consumer debt?

And if so...does that strike anyone else as unjust?

After all, a CSO isn't really a "debt," but in theory a "reimbursement of expenses" from the NCP to the CP for their child's or children's living expenses.

In intact families, children's living expenses (eg, food, clothing, recreation, etc) are not taken into account in the mortgage application process.

So why should they be taken into account in divorced families, by requiring NCP's to document CSO's?

Isn't this in effect discrimination on the basis of marital status?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Some banks treat is as consumer debt, some don't.  The other thing to remember is that if you have excellent rating the Consumer debt ratio can be pushed up to 50% by many banks (unless you were already using the 50% ratio).  DH's CS was so high when we applied for our home that the with the 36% rule we'd never qualify, but both of us had stellar credit.  We made it thru the process fine.  I'd say check to bank.  many will pre-qualify you with only minimal amounts of info.  Try some of those and see what happens.  Best of luck!