Partition & Co-Ownership  ·  September 12, 2026

Your Co-Owner Filed to Force a Sale. You May Be Able to Buy Them Out Instead.

Two people own a building together. One wants to cash out. The other wants to keep it.

For most of California’s history the co-owner who wanted to stay had limited options. Partition was an absolute right, a court-ordered sale was the common outcome, and the tools for buying out the departing owner required either that owner’s cooperation or a winning bid at the sale.

That changed for actions filed on or after January 1, 2023 — and a surprising number of people on both sides of these disputes still do not know it.

What actually changed in 2023

California adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act in 2021 (AB 633, Stats. 2021, ch. 119, effective January 1, 2022). As enacted it was narrow. It reached only “heirs property”: tenancy-in-common real property with no agreement in a record binding all cotenants governing partition, where one or more cotenants acquired title from a relative, and where any one of three familial thresholds was met — twenty percent or more of the interests held by relatives, twenty percent or more of the interests held by an individual who acquired title from a relative, or twenty percent or more of the cotenants being relatives. It was aimed at a specific problem: families losing inherited land to speculators who bought a small fractional interest and forced a sale.

Then AB 2245 (Stats. 2022, ch. 82, effective January 1, 2023) rewrote it. The statute was renamed the Partition of Real Property Act, and the heirs-property limitation was deleted outright. Code of Civil Procedure section 874.311 now reads, in full:

The words “heirs property” appear nowhere in the current chapter. Neither do the twenty percent thresholds. The Act now reaches tenancies in common generally — two investors who bought a fourplex together, three siblings who inherited a house, business partners holding title outside an entity — so long as there is no agreement in a record among all the cotenants governing partition.

A great deal of the material written about this statute still describes it as an heirs-property law. For any action filed on or after January 1, 2023, that is wrong.

Does the Act apply if we hold title as joint tenants?

No — and this threshold question decides whether any of the rest applies.

Section 874.311(b) applies the Act to “real property held in tenancy in common.” Joint tenancy is not mentioned anywhere in the chapter. A joint tenant has no section 874.317 buyout right and no section 874.319 great-prejudice factors; a partition between joint tenants proceeds under the general partition provisions of Title 10.5, outside Chapter 10.

This matters more than it sounds. Unmarried couples, siblings, and parents and children in California very often hold title as joint tenants with right of survivorship, because that is what the deed form and the escrow officer defaulted to. A joint tenancy can be severed, which converts the interest to a tenancy in common: Civil Code section 683.2 sets out how one joint tenant may sever unilaterally, and severance can also occur by agreement or conveyance among the joint tenants.

Severing before filing puts the property in tenancy in common before the action begins, which is the cleanest way to fit section 874.311(b). The statute does not say when tenancy-in-common status is measured, and whether a severance accomplished after filing brings the case within the Act is a question no published California decision has answered.

Pull the deed before relying on the buyout and great-prejudice provisions below. Much of the rest of this article — the right to partition, the accounting, and the general cost provisions of sections 874.010 and 874.040 — applies either way. Section 874.321.5 does not: it is part of the Act, so its limit on charging costs to a party who opposes partition reaches only cases the Act governs.

How does the cotenant buyout right work?

This is the provision that matters, and it is the reason a cotenant who wants to keep the property is no longer a spectator.

Under section 874.317, if any cotenant requests partition by sale, the court must — after it has determined the value of the property under section 874.316 — notify the others that they may buy the interests of everyone who requested the sale. That sequence matters: the election clock does not start when the case is filed, or when the sale is requested. It starts when the court sends that notice — which can only happen after the court has set a value, the same number the buyout price is computed from. The statute sets no deadline for sending the notice, so do not count 45 days from the valuation order. The mechanics then run on a fixed schedule:

1. 45 days to elect. Any cotenant except one who requested partition by sale may notify the court that it elects to buy — and the election is to buy “all the interests of the cotenants that requested partition by sale.” § 874.317(a), (b). It is all or nothing; a cotenant cannot buy out one seller and leave another in place.
2. The price is pro rata, at full value. “The purchase price for each of the interests of a cotenant that requested partition by sale is the value of the entire parcel determined under Section 874.316 multiplied by the cotenant’s fractional ownership of the entire parcel.” § 874.317(c).
3. At least 60 days to fund. The court sets a payment date no sooner than 60 days after notice, and the money goes into court. § 874.317(e).
4. If more than one cotenant elects, the right to buy is allocated among them in proportion to their existing interests. § 874.317(d)(2).
5. If nobody elects, the case proceeds to the in-kind-versus-sale analysis under section 874.318. § 874.317(d)(3).
6. If some elect and then fail to pay, the cotenants who did pay get a second 20-day window — but each one must pay “the entire price” for all of the remaining interest, not a proportional share. If more than one does, the court reapportions among them and refunds the excess. § 874.317(e)(3), (f).

There is also a provision that gets overlooked. Within the same 45 days, a cotenant entitled to buy may ask the court to authorize the sale, in the same action, of the interests of cotenants who were served but never appeared. § 874.317(g). After a hearing the court may deny that request or authorize it “on such terms as the court determines are fair and reasonable,” priced off the same determination of value, and only after the other purchase prices have been paid in. § 874.317(h). For a co-owner trying to consolidate title against absent or defaulting cotenants, this is the strongest tool in the section.

Three features of this structure deserve emphasis.

The selling cotenant loses control of the outcome. Any co-owner who requested partition by sale is excluded from buying — and if more than one requested it, all of them are. If another cotenant elects and funds, that sale does not happen.

The price is probably not discounted — but no court has said so. Section 874.316(d) requires the court-appointed appraiser to value the property “assuming sole ownership of the fee simple estate,” and section 874.317(c) then applies a straight arithmetic multiplier. On that text, a 30% cotenant is bought out at 30% of what the whole property is worth, without the minority, control or marketability discounts that are real and often substantial in the private market. That is the better reading of the statute. It is not a settled one: section 874.316(b) lets all cotenants agree to “another method of valuation,” section 874.316(c) lets the court set value after an evidentiary hearing without repeating the sole-ownership instruction, and no California court has decided the question.

Electing is not free. If no electing cotenant timely pays, section 874.317(e)(2) directs the court to resolve the action under section 874.318 “as if the interests of the cotenants that requested partition by sale were not purchased.” The property goes to the in-kind-or-sale analysis anyway, and the electing cotenant has paid for an appraisal and motion practice to get there. Because the buyout price is computed on a pro rata share of the court’s determination of whole-property value, with no discount contemplated by the statutory formula, it can be a substantially larger number than a negotiated buyout of the same fractional interest. Know where the money is coming from before electing.

How is the property valued?

Everything in the buyout runs off the court’s determination of value, so section 874.316 is where these cases are actually won.

An appraisal is mandatory unless one of two exceptions applies: all cotenants agree on a value or a valuation method, in which case the court adopts it, or the court finds the evidentiary value of an appraisal is outweighed by its cost and sets value after an evidentiary hearing instead.

If the court orders an appraisal, it appoints a disinterested California-licensed appraiser. The appraisal is filed under oath. Within 10 days the court sends notice to “each party with a known address” stating the appraised value, that the appraisal is available at the clerk’s office, and that objections may be filed within 30 days. A hearing follows no sooner than 30 days after that notice — whether or not anyone objects — and at that hearing the court “may consider any other evidence of value offered by a party.”

What if nobody buys? Division first, sale second

Physical division has been California’s default for decades. Section 872.810 directs the court to divide the property among the parties according to their interests, and section 872.820 permits a sale only where the parties agree or the court determines that “sale and division of the proceeds would be more equitable than division of the property.”

What the Act changed is the standard and the required analysis. Section 874.318(a) provides that the court “shall order partition in kind unless the court, after consideration of the factors listed in Section 874.319, finds that partition in kind will result in great prejudice to the cotenants as a group.” It applies where the interests of the cotenants requesting sale were not all purchased, or where after a completed buyout a cotenant remains who has requested partition in kind — so a buyout does not always end the case. Section 874.318(a) also directs the court to approve a request by two or more parties to aggregate their interests, letting cotenants who want to stay together be treated as a bloc.

The great-prejudice factors in section 874.319(a) are: whether the property can practicably be divided; whether division would make the parcels worth materially less in the aggregate than a whole-property sale, “taking into account the condition under which a court-ordered sale likely would occur”; the collective duration of ownership by a cotenant and relatives; a cotenant’s sentimental attachment, including ancestral or other unique value; the lawful use a cotenant is making of the property and the harm from losing it; the degree to which cotenants have carried their pro rata share of taxes, insurance and upkeep; and “[a]ny other relevant factor.”

Subdivision (b) does not forbid a single factor from carrying the day. It provides that the court “shall not consider any one factor in subdivision (a) to be dispositive without weighing the totality of all relevant factors and circumstances.” A court may rest on one factor, but it has to weigh everything first.

Those factors are holdovers from the heirs-property original. AB 2245 amended section 874.319 only to strike the word “heirs” from the first factor, leaving the substance untouched — so a commercial co-investor is now entitled to argue sentimental attachment and length of ownership. That is an odd result, and it is the current state of the statute.

Realistically, a single-family house or a condominium cannot be divided, and the in-kind presumption gives way. The provision does real work on acreage, on multi-building parcels, and occasionally on a lot that can be split.

If it sells, is there a minimum price?

Yes. Section 874.320 sets the method, and it sets a floor.

An open-market sale is required “unless the court finds that a sale by sealed bids or an auction would be more economically advantageous and in the best interest of the cotenants as a group.” If the parties agree on a licensed California broker within 10 days of the order, the court appoints that broker and sets a reasonable commission; otherwise the court appoints a disinterested one. And the broker “shall offer the property for sale in a commercially reasonable manner at a price no lower than the determination of value and on the terms and conditions established by the court.”

That floor is the practical answer to the old complaint about partition sales — that a forced sale produces a fire-sale number. If the broker cannot find a buyer at the determination of value within a reasonable time, the court holds a hearing and may approve the highest outstanding offer, redetermine value and order the property offered for an additional time, or order sealed bids or an auction. § 874.320(d).

In a flat market that matters more, not less. The California Association of Realtors reported a statewide median of $887,680 for existing single-family homes in July 2026, up 0.3% year over year, with Los Angeles County at $888,120, down 2.6%. (That series covers existing single-family detached homes, not multifamily or commercial property, so treat it as a signal about the market a court-ordered sale would run into rather than a valuation of any particular asset.) When prices are not climbing, the co-owner who wants out cannot simply wait for appreciation to solve the problem — and the co-owner who wants to stay is facing a court-ordered sale into a market that will not obviously reward it. The determination of value and the listing floor become the entire fight.

Who pays the attorney’s fees in a partition action?

Three provisions interact, and the third is easy to miss.

Section 874.010 defines the costs of partition to include “[r]easonable attorney’s fees incurred or paid by a party for the common benefit,” the referee’s fee and expenses, surveyor costs, title report costs, and other disbursements the court finds were incurred for the common benefit. “Common benefit” is the gatekeeper — but it does not mean a contested case produces no recoverable fees. Orien v. Lutz (2017) 16 Cal.App.5th 957 reversed a fee award on an unrelated contract ground and remanded for the trial court to proceed under the partition statutes, leaving intact the premise that fees incurred in a contested partition can still be “for the common benefit” and apportionable under sections 874.010 and 874.040.

Section 874.040 governs apportionment, and its entire text is one sentence: “Except as otherwise provided in this article, the court shall apportion the costs of partition among the parties in proportion to their interests or make such other apportionment as may be equitable.”

How far that equitable discretion runs has divided the Courts of Appeal. Finney v. Gomez (2003) 111 Cal.App.4th 527 read the statute narrowly, relying on the Law Revision Commission comments. Lin v. Jeng (2012) 203 Cal.App.4th 1008 declined to follow it, reading the discretion broadly. In Orien v. Lutz, the Second District recounted the disagreement in a footnote, noting that Lin rejected Finney’s reasoning as having “exalted the Comments over the statutory language.” Orien did not resolve it — it had no need to — though it cited Lin approvingly for the proposition that a court may reach a similar result through its equitable discretion under section 874.040. The California Supreme Court has not taken up the split.

Then there is section 874.321.5:

In a case governed by the Act, costs may not be apportioned to a cotenant who opposes partition unless the court finds that doing so is both equitable and consistent with the chapter’s purposes. That is a real constraint, and it points in favor of the co-owner who wants to keep the property. How demanding the finding is in practice, no published decision says.

Four things that have not changed

Partition is still a right, not a request. Code of Civil Procedure section 872.710(b): “[e]xcept as provided in Section 872.730, partition as to concurrent interests in the property shall be as of right unless barred by a valid waiver.” As the court put it in Orien v. Lutz, “[a] co-owner of property has an absolute right to partition unless barred by a valid waiver.” Nothing in the Act changes that. The buyout does not defeat the other cotenant’s right to get out — it changes who buys and at what price.

A consensual buyout has been available since 1976. Code of Civil Procedure sections 873.910 through 873.980 allow the parties, where interests are undisputed or adjudicated, to agree in writing to a partition by appraisal, with court-appointed referees setting value. That route requires agreement. The section 874.317 buyout is the non-consensual analogue, and it is the one that matters when the co-owners are not cooperating.

Private agreement still controls. Section 874.311(b) applies the Act only where there is “no agreement in a record binding all the cotenants which governs the partition of the property” — most naturally read as an agreement already in place when the action is filed, though the subdivision does not say so. Separately, section 874.313(a) provides that property “shall be partitioned under this chapter unless all of the cotenants otherwise agree in a record,” which cotenants can do after filing. Note that “record” is broader than “writing”: section 874.312(d) defines it as information inscribed on a tangible medium or stored electronically and retrievable in perceivable form. Either route moves the case back to the general scheme, which is a different thing from waiving the right to partition altogether. Those concepts get blurred constantly; waiver of the right itself runs through section 872.710(b) and the case law.

A right of first refusal delays; it rarely defeats. In LEG Investments v. Boxler (2010) 183 Cal.App.4th 484, the Third District held that the right of partition may be waived by contract, express or implied, and that an agreement giving cotenants rights of first refusal implies an agreement not to bring a partition action in lieu of a sale to the cotenants. But the court treated the ROFR as modifying rather than extinguishing the partition right: once the selling cotenant complies and the others decline, partition is back on the table. Whether a bare right of first refusal is also “an agreement… which governs the partition of the property” that takes a case outside the Act under section 874.311(b) is an open question.

The accounting nobody budgets for

Every partition includes one. As Wallace v. Daley (1990) 220 Cal.App.3d 1028, 1036 put it, “[e]very partition action includes a final accounting according to the principles of equity for both charges and credits upon each cotenant’s interest,” and Code of Civil Procedure section 872.140 authorizes compensatory adjustment among the parties on equitable principles.

A cotenant who paid taxes, mortgage, insurance or preservation costs is generally entitled to contribution. Improvements are credited even without the other owner’s consent. Wallace, quoting Mercola v. Chester (1950) 97 Cal.App.2d 140, 143, restates the rule this way: “[e]ven though one cotenant does not consent to the making of the improvement, since an action for partition is essentially equitable in its nature, a court of equity is required to take into account the improvements which another cotenant, at his own cost in good faith, placed on the property which enhanced its value.” Good faith and enhanced value are the requirements — not permission.

The trap runs the other way. A cotenant in exclusive possession does not ordinarily owe rental value to the others absent ouster. But under Hunter v. Schultz (1966) 240 Cal.App.2d 24, when that cotenant affirmatively seeks contribution for what they have paid, the court may charge them defensively with at least part of the reasonable value of their occupancy. Asking for reimbursement is what opens the door to being charged rent.

What has not happened yet

As of September 2026, we are aware of no published California appellate decision construing the Act.

Nothing published on the section 874.317 buyout. Nothing on the section 874.311 applicability provision that now sweeps in tenancies in common generally. Nothing on the open-market-sale preference or the listing floor. More than three and a half years after the Act began applying to partition actions, trial courts across California are running these procedures with the statutory text and little else.

For anyone litigating one of these cases, that is the operative fact. The schedule is rigid — 45 days to elect, at least 60 days to fund — and there is no appellate gloss to soften a missed deadline or to tell a trial judge how much weight a “sentimental attachment” factor carries for two investors who bought a building together in 2014. The text is the whole argument.

If you are in one of these

Check the deed first. Tenancy in common or joint tenancy decides whether the Act — the buyout, the great-prejudice factors, the cost protection in section 874.321.5 — is available at all.

The single most consequential moment is then the determination of value under section 874.316, because the buyout price, the listing floor, and every negotiation that follows are computed from it. By the time the appraisal is filed, a party that has not developed its own evidence of value is already behind.

The second is the 45-day election window. It runs from the court’s notice, not from when a co-owner gets around to arranging financing. A cotenant who wants to keep the property should know, before the appraisal lands, roughly what the buyout will cost and where the money is coming from — because electing and then failing to fund puts the property back on the path to sale.

Deadlines in these cases interact with the broader limitations rules; our reference on California real estate litigation deadlines covers the ones that come up most often. ROMO Law Group handles partition and quiet title actions and co-ownership and purchase-sale disputes throughout Southern California.

Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. This article is general information about California law, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and case law change; confirm current authority before relying on any of it.

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