When One Co-Owner Won’t Sell: Forcing the Sale Through Partition (2026 Edition)

Co-owners who once aligned — siblings on an inherited house, unmarried partners on a shared mortgage, investors on a commercial parcel — routinely reach the point where one wants out and the other refuses. Absent a contract governing exit, they sit frozen, and the client lands on your desk with no obvious way forward. That deadlock is now common. Unmarried couples are buying together at record rates, and California’s Partition of Real Property Act, effective January 1, 2023, rewrote the default rules with a mandatory court-ordered appraisal and cotenant buyout rights that displace the old forced-auction reflex. Real estate, probate,…