Legal Question in Real Estate Law in New York

Re: Removing name & responsibility of co-owner

Buy them out, refinance and record a new deed.

Re: Removing name & responsibility of co-owner

If you and the co-owner can agree to the value of the property, you could refinance and pay the co-owner to take full title to the property.

If you and the co-owner cannot agree to the value of the property, (and cannot agree to a neutral appraiser), you would have to start a partition action to partition (separate) the property. At the conclusion of the action the property is sold for an amount agreed to by a referee, and you would have the option of buying the property for that amount.

Mike.

Re: Removing name & responsibility of co-owner

Dear Reader:

In examining this response, please note that we are not entering into an attorney/client relationship, that this is to be taken as informative, and not as legal advice, that it is always best to speak to a lawyer in your area and/or in the area where the transaction and/or events occurred, and that my answer is necessarily limited by the fact that I have not seen the documentation or had an opportunity to go over the matters with you in detail.

I concur with the previous replies. Assuming you and your co-owner are not married to each other, you can buy your counterpart out, be bought out, agree to sell to a third party, or have the property partitioned and sold. It is not possible to simply remove someone from a deed without their approval (probably an explicit contract or affidavit).

As I mentioned before, this is something that you will want to take up with a lawyer of your own selection, either in your state or area or in a place where some of the pertinent events occurred, and each of these scenarios will eventually require a lawyer become involved.

Rod Kovel

Attorney at Law

516-312-9900