What is a suit for partition?

Attorney Tom Olsen: I had a lady retain me a couple of weeks ago. She owns a home jointly with her brother and she wants that property sold, but he just won't move on it. What's the motivation for him? He's living there. She retained me to write him a demand letter saying, "Look, either you need to agree to sell it. We're going to split the proceeds or you need to agree to buy me out. Otherwise, we're going to have to do what's called a suit for partition."

That brother went and got a lawyer, and that lawyer wrote me a letter. Something like he's going to challenge the validity of the deed regarding to both your names. I go fine. She said, "Give me a week to figure it out." It's been like three weeks. I haven't heard anything from her, this lawyer. Called and left her a voicemail. She hasn't called me back. So much for their claim that it's an invalid deed. I've now talked to Rob Solomon about doing a suit for partition, starting a suit for partition.

Attorney Chris Merrill: Wow. Of course, that's a great example, if you will, in that when people own it other than married couples and that, and like you were talking about earlier about joint tenants. Again, you own it with somebody other than your spouse with this property is that, of course, you want to be able to have them agree or have somebody buy it out. In this situation, the next step would be having you write a demand letter, but ultimately at the end, if it's not able to be worked out, there is a remedy. That remedy is suit for partition. Am I correct, in your experience, Tom, the judge, they're going to grant that, right?

Attorney Tom Olsen: There is no defense to it. Folks, what we're saying is that in state of Florida, whenever you have two or more owners of a piece of property, any one of them can force the sale of that property through a suit for partition. As part of that, the judge is going to order that the attorney who brought that suit for partition be paid out of the proceeds. If the other party won't cooperate, in this case, her brother, and we have to do the suit for partition, the bro's going to end up paying half the attorney's fees and court costs to get this done. There is no defense to it. The court is going to grant it.

Attorney Chris Merrill: Then the point is because they should have resolved it prior to coming to the suit.