Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
“It’s a partition action, because that is something that came up. And I said, wait a minute. Because is this going to help the resolution of the real estate dispute?”
Andre Clark – Real Estate Attorney – Los Angeles/San Bernardino County, CA
“Yes. So, I almost started to get the definition of partition when I was explaining quiet title. So, partition is when you have two or more owners that own real estate together. You can partition other types of property. But here we’re talking about real estate, and they no longer want to be owners anymore. Co-owners. That’s because one private party wants to sell. And the other party wants to stay and refinance. So, it’s usually a dispute between one party that wants to keep the property and one party that wants to sell.
Well, the partition is a civil action that will… it’s intended to force the sale of the property. You have an absolute right to not be a co-owner with another person, or you don’t even have to have a reason, kind of like a divorce. But there’s different types of partition. Once you file a partition, you can either have a partition by sale, or you could have a partition in kind. A partition in kind is basically… partition as a physical division of the property.
We have a piece of land that’s exactly square, same length on each side, and we can split it down the middle and give each person exactly the same amount. Most properties are not like that. Properties have hills. Properties are not perfect squares. And then, especially if you have a house, you can’t split a house in half. Usually partition by kind doesn’t happen in residential real estate, even in land, unless you have a perfect square, it’s just not going to happen.
So, it’s usually partition by sale, or what they call partition by appraisal. And there’s been a lot of changes in the law when partition by appraisal, giving co-owners the right. The co-owner that didn’t fit a partition, the right to buy the property at fair market value within so many days. But partition by appraisal is, basically, you get an appraisal of the property, and then one party pays the other person off.
But look at partition as basically like a divorce for real estate. And in fact, it happens in family law cases where people get a divorce, sometimes you’ve got to partition the interest that they have in real estate. Well, sometimes people come to me, and they say,
‘hey, I want to do a partition’,
and they found out that their spouse is… and I have to send them to a family law attorney. Only deal with partitions between owners who are not married.”
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