Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Virginia

Property Ownership question
My mother-in-law is having problems with ownership of her house. We live in VA. The house is one single-family home that her grandfather divided in 2 (he put a wall in the middle of the house, creating two identical smaller houses). He gave one half to her and the other half to her brother. Both siblings are on the title of the house, which was divided equally. The brother died and the house is under his son's name. This nephew wants to sell the entire house (where my in-laws have been living for more than 25 years) and gave her basically 3 options: 1)she can buy out his half of property for a price he set up without consulting with an appraiser, 2) they can sell the entire property and divide the profit 3) go to court and request a forced sale of the property.
The nephew (and his father as well) never lived in the house, they always rented it. My in-laws paid in many occasions property taxes on the entire house because the brother would not do it. They cleaned the septic tank, cut grass and renovated inside without receiving any monetary help by the other part. Should we try to rezone the house in two separate units? Or should we make him an offer to buy his half (subtracting all the money that my in-laws spent for that half)?

Asked on 3/17/09, 2:29 pm

Michael Hendrickson Law Office Michael E. Hendrickson

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Re: Property Ownership question

Your latter suggestion would seem preferable(much easier) than attempting to legally divide the structure into two separate and distict units.

Answered on 3/18/09, 5:02 pm

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