Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: selling a home

You file a Partition action.

Re: selling a home

It's WAY more complicated than filling out a form. It is POSSIBLE for you to pursue a partition action yourself, but 99.99% of people would need a lawyer to actually make it happen.

Re: selling a home

I've read both propr answers and maybe have a slightly different view, or at least there is another angle to look at........

You mention "break the partnership." This raises the POSSIBILITY that you really have a bona fide partnership with the other owner(s) of the property. Probably, however, you are using the term "partnership" informally, to indicate co-ownership as joint tenants or tenants in common.

To tell whether or not there is a real partnership, a lawyer would have to ask questions about the nature of the home ownership, the purposes for which it was acquired, and so on. Factors tending to show a partnership would include evidence of an intention to own the house as a for-profit business, either as a rental or for resale at a profit; existence of a partnership agreement, holding title to the property in the name of a partnership rather than the names of individuals as co-owners, filing partnership tax returns, and generally having a profit motive. Merely owning property together doesn't necessarily, or even usually, create a partnership.

If indeed you really have a partnership, partition MIGHT still be the way to break up; Code of Civil Procedure section 872.310 permits use of partition-law principles in dividing partnership property. However, the Corporations Code, which contains partnership laws, has many other, specialized, provisions covering the breakup of true partnerships. These are codified at Corporations Code sections 16601 to 16807. In some ways, this might be an easier route.

More likely than not, this is just a co-ownership situation for personal or family reasons, without a primary business purpose, and the unhappy co-owner will be stuck with partition.

Partition is a specialized kind of lawsuit in which a court is asked to supervise and direct the sale of property and division of the net proceeds among the co-owners along rather well-defined principles of fairness, taking into account relative ownership shares, adjusted for excess contributions of an owner for necessary expenses such as loan payments, property taxes, insurance and necessary repairs. Costs of improvements are not taken into account unless both (or all) parties agreed to the improvements beforehand.

What often happens is that the co-owner who didn't want to sell will change his or her mind when sued, and rather than get involved in a lengthy and expensive legal battle, will either consent to the sale (and an out-of-court settlement of the money issues), or will step up to the plate and buy out (or be bought out) by the other - all resulting in pre-trial settlement and dismissal. Sometimes the parties agree to sell and use a private arbitration process to resolve remaining issues (money).