A partition action is a lawsuit in which a court determines whether a property with two or more owners is to be partitioned or sold. When two or more owners cannot agree on the disposition of the property in question, any of the owners can file a partition action in the appropriate court.
To initiate a partition action in Pennsylvania, a co-owner must file a partition complaint at the Court of Common Pleas. The Complaint will set forth the property description, the names and addresses of the co-owners, and their interest in the property.
In short, to force the sale of jointly owned property, you must first confirm title, then attempt a voluntary sale or buyout, file and serve a partition lawsuit, get an appraisal, sell the property, and finally divide the sale proceeds fairly.
Can One Owner Sell a Jointly Owned Property? Generally, one co-owner cannot sell the entire property without the consent of the others. However, in a tenancy in common, a party may sell their interest without seeking consent from the others.
In this article, the term partitioning means the process of physically dividing data into separate data stores. It is not the same as SQL Server table partitioning.