Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Louisiana

Re: Family member unwilling to sign purchase if deceased parents home

is the property in missouri or louisiana?

Re: Family member unwilling to sign purchase if deceased parents home

Under Louisiana law you do not have to remain a co-owner of real estate if you don't want to do so. The manner in which you can undo the co-ownership situation is called a partition of property. This can occur in one of two ways. The first method is a partition in kind, in which the property is equally divided (i.e. if there were five children and you had five horses to divide, you would each get a horse). A house is not susceptible of a partition in this manner, which brings us to the other type of partition, which is a partition by licitation. Under that type of partition, the property is sold (by the sheriff) to the highest bidder, and after subtracting the sheriff's fees and court costs, the proceeds from the sale are divided among the co-owners.

If you have one sibling who wants out in a hurry and the other siblings want to wait to sell the property by conventional means, what you might try to do is have the four of you get together and buy out your sister's interest. If all four of you participated equally, you would then each own 25% of the property and be able to sell the property when you received what you considered to be the right price. If the sister won't agree to sell it to you, then there may be nothing you can do to prevent the partition, but that may not be a bad result. You can always buy the property from the sheriff yourself. If the price is too low, you can be the high bidder and in effect buy your sister's interest for possibly lower than you offered her. If all of the other siblings participate equally, you will each own 25%. If the price is high enough, you can always just take your share of the proceeds from the sheriff's sale. The reason I recommend trying to work it out with the reluctant sister is that you will save the sheriff's fees and court costs.