Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

"Half at point of sale?" Is the property currently under a contract for sale, or listed for sale? That might affect my answer. However, I'll assume the investment property is not currently on the market. The usual way for an unhappy co-owner to get out of the deal is to file a special kind of lawsuit, called a "partition" action. A suit for partition asks the court to determine the parties' interests, percentage ownership, etc., then have the property sold and the net proceeds divided fairly, reflecting the source of the down-payment and greater-than-fair-share contributions of one or another of the co-owners for expenses such as interest, taxes, insurance, certain long-life improvements and the like, and with consideration given to rental income one or the other has pocketed without sharing. The sale can be a courthouse-steps auction, but more likely either the judge or the parties themselves will agree to listing the property and selling it via normal commercial sale terms. Sometimes one or the other of the co-owners will decide to buy out the other(s) or to be bought out before the property is marketed to a stranger. Also, many partition suits are settled out-of-court or settled by arbitration of some or all of the issues. The applicable law is found in the Code of Civil Procedure beginning at section 872.010.

I should add that whether or not your cousin's business arrangement amounts to a true partnership in the legal sense is not clear. Ordinarily, when two or more people go into a business arrangement with intent to share the profits, a partnership is formed. However, co-ownership of real property, even income property, does not necessarily cause a partnership to be formed. See Corporations Code section 16202, subsections (a), (c)(1) and (c)(2). Although partnership disputes are usually litigated under the provisions of partnership law (see, e.g., Corporations Code sections 16405, 16602(c), and 16806), if this is a partnership, the provisions of the partition law may still be applied if the court thinks partition is a suitable remedy (see CCP 872.730).