Taking Title as Wife and Husband When Homebuying

Bride and groom at reception discuss the good reasons to hold title as wife and husband when buying a home.

When I mention taking title as wife and husband when you’re buying a home; this is not meant to leave out anybody in the Sacramento LGBT Community. I know married people, for example, who refer to their coupling as husband and wife; yet others say husband and husband or wife and wife. There are few rules about what you can call your partner, unless you’re ticked off and intent upon sleeping on the sofa. But there are strict rules about ways to hold title to Sacramento real estate. Further, some married couples prefer taking title as wife and husband instead of husband and wife, regardless of gender.

Why does it have to be husband and wife? Is there any reason for the name of the male to be first on a grant deed? It’s just custom. Conformity. And it is definitely time to buck tradition a bit.

I am very cognizant of whether couples hold title as wife and husband when I take a listing, for example, because it also means making sure the wife signs first on every document, including the purchase agreement. In fact, my husband and I hold title as wife and husband, a practice put in place for our first home in Minneapolis. We did it for two reasons. One is so the solicitations for a new home mortgage and whatnot don’t bother my husband. They tend to mail to the first person on title. The other is to stir things up. To rebel against the norm. To say why not?

Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, is covered in corn.

When we sold our home in Minneapolis, right after 9/11, in the midst of closing concurrently in California, I was driving my vehicle out to Sacramento with an old friend when we stopped at the Corn Palace in South Dakota. It’s one of those weird things one is required to do by law when one is driving through South Dakota, just so you can say you have viewed the corn-struction in person. I was holding that former friend’s cellphone, trying to position myself “just so” in middle the street, in the exact spot where I could pick up a cell tower, as cars swerved to avoid hitting me right there in front of the God-awful Corn Palace, yakking to my husband about closing escrow.

He mentioned the escrow company mixed up the deed and put his name first. They forgot. Well, it wasn’t recorded yet. That escrow company in Sacramento needs to change the deed, I insisted, yelling into the cellphone and over the honking cars, as we are taking title as wife and husband, not husband and wife. Escrow was able to change it at the last minute and record the deed in accordance with our wishes. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

Let’s not even get to the subject of now I pronounce you . . .