Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: what is joint tenancy

It depends whether the other joint tenant terminated the joint tenancy before the sale. If not, you may have substantial rights to dictate the terms of the sale.

I would need more information before I could advise.

Re: what is joint tenancy

A joint tenancy is one of the several ways that two (or more, but usually two) persons can share ownership of property, usually real estate.

The most important characteristic of joint tenancy is that the co-owners, who are called joint tenants, have the "right of survivorship." This means that if one joint tenant dies, the other joint tenant becomes the sole owner automatically, regardless of the deceased joint tenant's will, or the rules of intestate succession. This makes joint tenancy useful for certain classes of co-owners, usually relatives other than husband and wife (where "community property" is the more usual form of co-ownership in California).

Most unrelated persons, such as co-investors, will hold co-owned property as "tenants in common" instead of as joint tenants. Tenants in common can will their partial interests in property to their own heirs, and the other co-owner has no say in the process and no interest in the result.

Both joint tenants and tenants in common have the theoretical right to deal with their half (or other fractional) interest in the co-owned property as they wish. However, as a practical matter, a co-owner has very limited opportunity to sell, lease, mortgage, etc. his or her part interest. It's like trying to sell a half interest in an automobile, or even worse. There is no market.

So, in short, a joint tenant has the right to sell his or her part interest, but since the OTHER co-owner still has the right of shared possession of the entire property, there would be very few interested buyers.

Incidentally, if a joint tenant does manage to sell his or her partial interest to a third party, the third party and the other former joint tenant are NOT joint tenants, but tenants in common, since both joint tenants must acquire their ownership at the same time.

I hope this is somewhat helpful. The subject of tenancies (estates) in land is rather complex and full of rules that are not obvious or even reasonable-sounding to a non-lawyer. They are rooted in antiquity, only partially modernized.