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Buying out relative from a co-owned house

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woodyotto

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Massachusetts

I have jointly owned a vacation home in Maine for the past 10 years or so with a relative. This home was given to us as part of a will and legally transfered into both our names as co-owners. I have not used the house in years and wish to sell it. I have offered to sell my half but was declined so now I would like to offer to buy the other half. I am willing to give a reasonable offer based on an appraisal. What is the initial procedure, do I need to fill out a P&S or can it be as simple as a notarized letter?

Any advice would be appreciated. I want to follow a proper legal procedure, as many past attempts to resolve this have been met with resistance.
Thank you.
 


HomeGuru

Senior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Massachusetts

I have jointly owned a vacation home in Maine for the past 10 years or so with a relative. This home was given to us as part of a will and legally transfered into both our names as co-owners. I have not used the house in years and wish to sell it. I have offered to sell my half but was declined so now I would like to offer to buy the other half. I am willing to give a reasonable offer based on an appraisal. What is the initial procedure, do I need to fill out a P&S or can it be as simple as a notarized letter?

Any advice would be appreciated. I want to follow a proper legal procedure, as many past attempts to resolve this have been met with resistance.
Thank you.
**A: hire an attorney to help you draft the pertinent documents.
 

latigo

Senior Member
Unfortunately, your situation does not lend itself to a “SIMPLE” solution.

The root of the difficulty here is that the distribution of the vacation property out of the estate in equal undivided ownership created a “tenancy in common” or an "estate in cotenancy". Which is, without exception, the worst conceivable method of holding title to land! It creates nothing but legal headaches, as you are now just beginning to experience.

[Whoever shortsightedly administered the estate from whence this property came made a critical error in distributing the asset in kind rather than selling it out of probate and distributing the proceeds!]

Because one of the downsides of cotenancy is: If the other co-tenant/co-owner is not agreeable, you cannot force him or her to sell their interest to you or to anyone else. (No more that you could compel a total stranger to sell you their home.)

Another is that is that one co-owner cannot compel another co-owner to purchase their interest.

Moreover, each owner has equal rights to the use and occupancy of the property and cannot be held responsible to compensate an absent owner for that use.

HG’s suggests that you “hire an attorney to help you draft the pertinent documents”. Well, treat that for what it is worth - nothing more than unschooled nonsense.

Because your attorney can draft all the bloody “pertinent documents” you can pay for, but they aren’t going to alleviate your dilemma by preventing the other co-owner from ignoring your overtures and electing to sit on the property until Dooms Day – leaving you with the option of continuing as is, OR petitioning the appropriate court for partition of real property.

And petitioning for partition is the last desperate resort, as it would result in the court ordering the property sold by the sheriff on the courthouse steps at a public auction.
_____________________

If you are interested in learning how you might apply leverage against the other owner and coerce him or her to sell or buy on mutually acceptable terms - an offer that can't reasonably be refused - let me know and I’ll give you some pointers.

But please ignore HG’s ill-informed response. That is unless you are so naive as to believe that your antagonist will be swooned by a pile of professionally prepared legalese.
 

FlyingRon

Senior Member
Hold, on there lagito. It's not been seen if the cotenant is unwilling to sell or not. The best strategy is to get a realistic market value (generally you can enlist the help of a real estate agent for this) on the property and determine the offer. The lawyer can then prepare a suitable contract which will form the offer. The poster is not out much money for this, and while it might we worth while to inquire first as to the willingness to accept an offer for X dollars, having it as a contract ready to sign might push the offer a little harder.

Starting with the suggestion of a partition action (which admittedly would be the way in the failure of all other attempts), is as irresponsible as you would hold HG's advice.
 

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