California Partition Law Blog
Joint ownership of property carries a significant number of rights with it. However, a joint owner cannot sell the property without permission from other co-owners. If one co-owner wants to sell or encumber the entire property and the other co-owner disagrees this can cause conflict. Outside of marriage, property is usually owned as a tenancy in common, a joint tenancy, or as a partnership. (Civ. Code § 686.) This type of ownership status usually stays the same over the course of one’s ownership.
What rights do you have as a joint tenant?
In a joint tenancy, all co-owners need to own the property in equal shares and must all get their ownership interests at the same time through the same instrument. (Tenhet v. Boswell (1976) 18 Cal.3d 150, 155.) A joint tenancy carries with it the right of survivorship so if one co-owner dies, the other inherits that share automatically.