Forcing the sale of property through a suit for partition

Attorney Tom Olsen: Chrissy, regular listeners to this radio station know that I do morning segments with Alan Spector. Last week I did a segment on suit for partition, so I thought we might talk about suit for partition for a few minutes.

Attorney Chris Merrill: Absolutely.

Tom: The bottom line is that here in the state of Florida, whenever there are two or more owners of a piece of property, any one of them can force the sale of that piece of property. There's no defense to it. It will be done. You cannot stop it. If you co-owned property with somebody, they want to sell and you don't, you can't stop it if they file a suit for partition.

Chris: This is a legal remedy. Why? Because it's about not holding up real estate and tying it up. This legal remedy, which is why you're saying, Tom, that there's not a defense to it, the reason is it gives anybody in the state of Florida, if you are more than one owner and you cannot agree, there is a legal remedy. This is what you're saying, that the judge will say, yes, it has to be sold.

Tom: People may be thinking, "Tom, where is a situation where you've got co-owners of a piece of property and one of them wants to sell? I can't imagine that ever being such a case." Well, I found there's two situations where that often happens. One is that you have an adult child living in a home of mom and dad. Eventually, mom and dad have passed away and they leave it to all let's say four their kids.

Chris: Correct.

Tom: Well, that one child that's lived with mom and dad for all these years, and maybe taking care of mom and dad, they somehow feel like they are entitled to live in mom and dad's house for the rest of their life, but the other three kids, they want to sell that house and cash out. I can't blame them for that, but that's a common situation where now the four kids can't agree on selling the property just because one of them's living there and just won't-- can't face the facts that it's time to go. We solve that through a suit for partition sometimes.

The other situation I see is that when a piece of property is bought by a boyfriend and girlfriend, and think things are going to last forever, and next thing you know, things are not lasting forever. Let's say the boyfriend moves out and the girlfriend stays in the home while the boyfriend wants the property sold. He wants his share of the cash. He wants to cash out. She won't cooperate with him. Here we have former owners, former partners in a piece of property that are not together anymore. That's often a case that we have to resolve through a suit for partition.

Chris: Correct. You're right. Those are two of the most common. There could be others, but those are the two most common. Caller?

Tom: Again, when you do the suit for partition, there's no defense to it. The court is going to order it. By the way, the court's going to order that when the property gets sold and the money is held in a registry to be divided between the parties, the first thing off the top of is going to be attorney's fees and court costs. Just because you happen to be the one pursuing this suit for partition, and you may have to advance the court costs and attorney's fees, you will be reimbursed from all the other owners when it does eventually get sold, so it's not a big hit financially.

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