In season seven of Vanderpump Rules, Tom Sandoval twirls Ariana Madix around in his arms in the entrance of their newly purchased $2 million Valley Village home while she clutches a bottle of Champagne. The happy couple check if they can run two appliances at the same time, unlike in their former cramped apartment (they can), and take in their newly constructed five-bedroom, 4,453-square-foot house.
Fast-forward five years later, and the only thing the bitter exes can agree on is that neither is willing to move out. Despite Madix ending her nine-year relationship with Sandoval in March 2023 after news of his drawn-out affair with Vanderpump Rules castmate Rachel “Raquel†Leviss broke, the two have somehow continued to live together under the same roof.
The tension between the two is palpable this season. In their current “no-contact policy†arrangement, they each have separate living areas and only communicate through their respective assistants. Sandoval puts a white-noise machine outside his room so Madix can’t hear his conversations. When Sandoval proposes to hold a birthday party at the house, Madix tells his assistant that she will call the cops.
“I feel like the house is the last thing that’s tying things,†Madix says in the season 11 premiere, hinting at a potential plotline for the season. “But what I think is psychotic is that he wants to buy me out and stay here.â€
“If he has that kind of money, go buy something else,†Katie Maloney replies.
Madix says that she flatly rejected Sandoval’s offer to buy her out, because her moving out? “I don’t fucking thing so.†Instead, Madix tells Sandoval her lawyer will be in touch to deal with him, the house, and her “fucking children,†likely referring to Mya Moon, a gray-and-white pit mix that the then-couple adopted in April 2020, and Kitty, the cat she rescued from a New Jersey parking lot. She followed through with that threat by filing a lawsuit on January 5, 2024, in Los Angeles County asking a judge to intervene and order the sale of the house.
Madix and Sandoval’s first court hearing regarding the house, which has appreciated $800,000, has been set for June 3. With Madix and Sandoval’s fate now in a judge’s hands, legal experts weigh in on everything that went wrong with casa de Scandoval and how this potentially messy court battle could have been avoided if they had first ironed out a cohabitation agreement.
What is Madix asking for in her legal documents?
In the show and in her court papers, Madix has been adamant that she wanted the property to be sold as soon as possible and the proceeds split. She has asked the court to order a “partition by sale†and not “a division in kind,†which would entail basically dividing the property in half.
“You can’t sell the house unless both people agree to sell the house, but Tom wants to buy me out and stay there,†Madix said in a confessional on the show on February 6. “And I’m not going to pack up my clothes and hitchhike down the road because Tom offered me a measly sum of money. The fact of that matter is he broke the home. He fucked all this up. He doesn’t get to do that and, I don’t know, keep it.â€
Sandoval hasn’t responded yet in court documents, but if he did want to continue to live in the house with the property somewhat divided, Don Schuck, an attorney at Pryor Cashman, said that arrangement, called a “division in kind,†is almost impossible to do in a single-family home.
“You can’t just put a wall up to divide the property or run a line of tape through the house,†Schuck said. “It’s completely impractical.â€
Under the circumstances, Madix appeared to be left with no option but to ask the judge to intervene and order a sale, Schuck said.
“‘He’s not gonna budge, he’s not gonna move, he’s not going to buy me out, and he’s not gonna let me buy him out,’†Schuck said. “‘So I’ve gotta bring this action to bring it to a head.’â€
How will a judge decide who gets what?Â
Unlike married couples, who can be at risk of losing their house if they move out and establish a separate residence, unmarried couples have less legal protections and less hard-and-fast guidelines. Ultimately, a judge will consider what is fair and what, if anything, had been agreed to when the house was initially purchased.
“I think the judge would look for, Have you tried to buy out the arrangement and nobody’s budging?†Schuck said. “Have you tried someone moving out and the other person covering the carrying costs? That’s not working. So you’ve left me with no choice but to order the sale of this house or a buyout of one of the party’s interests.â€
“And I think she’s quite rightly taking the position that this is inhumane for us to continue,†he said.
Will the fact that Sandoval had an affair factor into the judge’s decision?
As confirmed in the show’s dramatic three-part reunion, Leviss and Sandoval began a seven-month-long affair in August 2022 when she crashed a guys’ night out. They later admitted that they hooked up multiple times at Scheana Shay’s wedding to Brock Davies. Leviss confessed she even slept over at Sandoval’s house when Madix left town to attend her grandmother’s funeral. Madix found out about the affair when Sandoval’s phone fell out of his pocket at a Bravo event and she saw a FaceTime screen recording of Sandoval and Leviss.
“I was ride-or-fucking-die for you, and I had her back as well,†Madix told Sandoval on the show in the final episode of season ten after she found out about the affair. “The fact she had continued to smile in my face while also smiling on FaceTime with you is one the most god-awful, disgusting things I’ve ever heard.â€
Now back to the courtroom: While cheating was once a factor that judges looked for in determining who was at fault in the breakup of a marriage, which weighed in property division, it has since become almost a nonfactor in divorces. Now, most states, including California, have moved to “no-fault†divorce laws. These laws are even less important in unmarried relationships.
While Sandoval and Leviss hooked up multiple times at Shay’s wedding in August 2022, a fact that Leviss confirmed during part three of the season-ten reunion, it took almost six months before Madix learned of their affair.
“She can certainly bring it up, but I don’t think it’s gonna have much relevance,†Schuck said. “They must hear that 40 times a day in a divorce section, and the fact that they’re not married makes that claim even less relevant … People break up all the time, and judges are not at all shocked when someone’s had an affair.â€
Madix has been adamant that she was taking custody of Mya Moon, a pit-bull mix, and their cat named Kitty, but could a judge step in if there were a fight over pet custody?
Devon Quinn, an attorney at Pryor Cashman, explained that historically, pets were considered chattel and their custody is treated the same as a piece of art. But New York and California, along with other states, have since adopted laws that recognize pets as something more, and courts consider what would be in the best interest of the pet.
“They look at each party’s home environment and who is really involved or not involved in the pet’s day-to-day life,†Quinn said. “Who takes the pet to the veterinarian, who spends time with them, who’s more involved, and who is gonna create the best life for the pet.†So the court could award Madix, who appears on the show to be their primary caregiver, with possession of Mya and Kitty.
While we wait for the June 3 court date, is there anything else viewers should take away from this mess?Â
Legal experts agree that if you’re an unmarried couple, you should consider a cohabitation agreement in place before you buy a house with a partner. The advice stands for friends who purchase real estate together.
“It doesn’t have to be a 40-page agreement,†Schuck said. “It could be a three-page agreement of, We’re living together, I’m putting down X, you’re putting down Y, and if we ever break up, we get our money back and split the difference, and then we immediately sell it within 30 days after we decide to split, unless somebody decides to buy out the other person. If you’re gonna invest this kind of money, it’s like any investment you make; you want to have an out clause in the event things don’t work out.â€