Partition

Definition

Partition in plain English

Sometimes several people own one property together — say, siblings who inherited a house — and they can't agree on what to do with it. Partition is the legal escape hatch: any co-owner can go to court to break up the shared ownership, even if the others say no. If the land can be physically split into fair pieces, the court does that; if it can't (you can't saw a house in half), the court orders the property sold and the money divided among the owners. It's the law's way of saying nobody is trapped in a co-ownership forever.

Learn these first

• Condominium
• Cooperative

Related National Real Estate Exam terms

• Bundle of rights
• Condominium
• Cooperative
• Dominant tenement
• Emblements
• Encroachment
• Estate
• Fee simple absolute
• Fee simple defeasible
• Fixture