1. Your scores as they are now (without the loan reporting yet) are not going to hinder you in any way.
2. At your current scores, you're only likely to see a small gain from the loan (although you can wait and see how much they actually increase).
3. I'm pretty sure your debt-to-income (DTI) ratio is probably just fine with or without the loan. But getting rid of the loan payments may actually help you more in a manual review than the extra few points on your score would. You will be approved for a larger monthly mortgage payment without the other loan (although it might be plenty high either way).
4. Paying off the loan is probably the wiser thing to do financially (without regard to you credit scores).
5. If you get pay off the loan and are done with it, then you don't have to think about the money you're effectively paying your ex wife every time you make a loan payment. This may or may not be an issue in your case. 
When you put it all together, it seems to me that paying it off is the better move.
The advantage to having the $35,000 loan and a bonus in cash of about that much, you have options.
What is the APR on the loan?
Is it a term loan (fixed payment schedule) or a revolver?
If a term loan, how many months is the loan payment plan?
When it reports, it will report 100% of the $35,000 loan amount as utilization?
I don't think I would be in a rush to use the bonus to pay off the loan right away. Having cash on hand provides some flexibility in the choices you have. You may decide soon after getting the bonus that paying off the loan is the best thing to do, or paying part of the loan is the best thing to do, but there may be something else that comes up and that's where having some cash available increases your options of what to do.
@Anonymous wrote:So I have succesfully rebuilt my credit and have a nice file with 800's across the board. I have a 20k line of credit with the NC state employees credit union (have a 0 balance on it) however they only report ot Equifax. I went today and got a 35K loan with BB&T to pay my x wife. Question, I can pay this off next month with a stock bonus I am getting however with my file being thin would you put the money in an account with the interest for a year and let it draft out to enhance my credit? I am conflicted about this as to the need of doing this? Do you think it would look better later down the road when I buy a house to have this on my credit for a year paid out instead of 1 month? Thank you for the imput..
Different lenders report partially paid installment loans different ways, and different bureaus interpret them differently.
Here's what you should do to cover all the bases:
1. First let the loan report on all 3 bureaus, without your doing anything special. You'll get a ding in your scores, but be patient.
2. Then pay the loan off down to 5% of the original balance, but not zero.
3. Evaluate how the loan reports on the 3 bureaus the following month.
4. If on balance the 95% paid off loan is helping your scores, keep it that way as long as possible, making miniscule payments on it. If, on the other hand, it's hurting your score, pay it down to zero and forget about it. You might find that it helps you with 1 bureau and hurts you with another; in that case you need to decide which bureau you care about most.
@Anonymous wrote:If it reports on my credit then It will probably look good even if I pay it off in 1 or 2 months? It is still a high loan that was paid off extremely early.. Thanks
Well, FICO algorithms are weird, and they differ based on bureau data, and based on which FICO model is being used.
There's usually a short-term penalty in FICO points for paying off an instalment loan... it's ridiculous, but there it is, so I can't make any representatons about what "looks good" to these monsters.