Indiana

"'A mortgage note is not equivalent to a marriage license -- though many people think one automatically leads to the other,' says Mark Nash, a Coldwell Banker broker and author of several real estate books.

Nash tells about a couple in their early 40s who dated just a short while before the woman, an investment banker, began pressuring the man, a marketing manager, to buy a house with her. He soon acquiesced and they chose an elegant place from the 1920s, with a steeply pitched roof, dormer windows and built-in cabinetry.

'This was her storybook house. She'd hoped to get married in the back garden as soon as they finished their big home renovation, which cost $150,000,' Nash recalls.

But the wedding never happened. Just three years after they bought the vintage house, he ended their relationship. And because she couldn't afford to buy out his equity, her dream house had to be sold."