Q.My family is considering a three-way purchase of a home. The signers would be my wife and I, my parents and my sister and her husband. How hard is it to get qualified for a mortgage with six co-signers? Do lenders look favorably on this type of situation or can we expect to pay a higher rate? We all have excellent credit and no financial problems to speak of.

A.Qualifying for a mortgage should be pretty easy. Six people with excellent credit guaranteeing a loan? That's a banker's dream.

Just remember that each signer is responsible for the entire payment. If one of your family members stops paying their share of the loan, you'll have to step in and make up the difference.

We're far more concerned about how you'll deal with all the legal questions posed by this kind of purchase. Will you be joint tenants, where if one owner dies, his or her share automatically goes to the other tenants? Or will you buy as tenants in common, where each owner can dispose of his or her share as the person sees fit?

How will you share the payments and what will you do if one couple has to sell their share of the property? Do the other owners buy them out? At what price? Or what if one of the couples gets divorced or simply decides that this setup doesn't suit their lifestyle?

You might think, "We're family. We can figure it out." But some of the nastiest disputes over home ownership involve couples who did not live happily ever after.

Go to a real estate attorney who will ask all of the right questions, draw up an agreement that will spell everything out and reduce the potential for a family fight.