If the other owner of your property is being unreasonable and you cannot agree on how to use or manage the property, and they refuse to sell their portion of the property, and consequently will not allow you to "buy them out" (e.g. is being an unreasonable A**), what you need to do is to ask the court to divide the property between you.
The action to do so is called "Partition" and is available to anyone who is a title owner or equitable owner of the piece of land.
While "title owner" is self explanatory, one also can have ownership share of the property, even though they are not ˆper se on the title. For example, a married couple bought a home but put only one person on the title, while one of them is not a title owner, the house is a community asset and the spouse that is not on the title, is an equitable owner.
When one brings the action for Partition, one will ask either for "partition by sale" [ when property is sold and proceeds divided] or "by appraisal" ( when property is appraised before time for trial, and with court order, petitioner "buys out " the other owners. Of course, there is also physical partition of a property as an option, these however are rare as land, especially with improvements, is difficult to divide equally.
Technically, Partition lawsuit cannot be resolved by default, meaning one cannot deprive co-owner of his property rights without their participation, although the co-owner may decide to be technically "in default", not filing the answer, but participate in the default "proof-up " hearing. NOTE: The Court tends to be very particular during "proof-up". Any damages that were not pleaded and for which Plaintiff cannot provide evidence, will defeat the attempt. Thus, the advice is to always ask for everything you wish to receive in the initial complaint, or the Court, even if they are sympathetic, cannot award you remedy not requested in the Complaint, since the other party had no notice of what you hoped to get.
If you cannot come to some terms during mandatory settlement conference, or the other owner id MIA, you will need to find a real estate broker who would agree to act as Referee. Once the Court orders the property to be sold or appraised, the Referee will handle finding the buyer or appraiser, and they will be setting the price, recommending to accept an offer , and then ask the court to approve the transaction.
In other words, it is a slow process and the expense of it usually is sufficient to persuade parties to come to an agreement, before the expenses of Referee { who is compensated as real estate broker and as referee] deprive the parties of sizable amount of cash.
In the end, the situation will be resolved, since co-owners have absolute right to partition. If you are on the war path with other co-owners of property, like when you inherited property from your parents, and you do not seem to come to any resolution, do not wait and contact Agnieszka M. Gill, Esq. via txt or call at (559) 346-8216, or email at AgnieszkaLawOffice@att.net.
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