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Joint Tenancy Information
What Is Joint Tenancy?
A concurrent estate or co-tenancy is a concept in property
law, particularly derived from the common law of real property, which describes
the various ways in which property can be owned by more than one person at a
given time. The parties who own property jointly are referred to as co-tenants
or joint tenants. Most common-law jurisdictions recognize three kinds of
concurrent estate: tenancy in common, joint tenancy with right of survivorship,
and tenancy by the entirety. Many jurisdictions simply refer to a joint tenancy
with right of survivorship as a joint tenancy, but a few U.S. States treat the
phrase joint tenancy as synonymous with a tenancy in common.
Rights And Duties Shared By All Co-Tenants
Co-tenants, irrespective of the type of tenancy, share certain rights to the
property:
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Each tenant has an unrestricted right of access to the
property. Where one co-tenant wrongfully excludes another from making use of
the property, the excluded co-tenant can bring a cause of action for ouster,
and may receive the fair rental value of the property for the time that he
was dispossessed.
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Each tenant has a right to an accounting of profits made
from the property. If the property generates income such as rent, each
tenant is entitled to a proportion of that income.
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Each tenant has a right of contribution for the costs of
owning the property. Co-tenants can be forced to contribute to the payment
of expenses such as repairs, property taxes, and mortgages on the entire
property.
Co-tenants have no obligation to contribute to any costs of
improving the property. Furthermore, each co-tenant can independently encumber
their own share in the property by taking out a mortgage on that share; other
co-tenants have no obligation to help pay a mortgage that only runs to another
tenant's share of the property, and the mortgagee can only foreclose on that
share.
Finally, co-tenants owe one another a duty of fair dealing. Because of this, any
co-tenant who acquires a mortgage claim against the property must give his
co-tenants a reasonable opportunity to purchase proportionate shares in that
claim.
Destruction Of A Tenancy In Common
Where the parties to a tenancy in common wish to destroy the joint interest,
they can do so through a partition of the property - a division of the land into
distinctly owned plots.
If the parties are unable to agree to a partition, any or all of them may seek
the ruling of a court to determine how the land should be divided up, physically
divide it between the joint owners, leaving each with ownership of a portion of
the property representing their share.
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