Costa Mesa Partition Lawyers

Costa Mesa is a city in Orange County and as incorporated in 1953. It has since grown from a rural farming community to an urban area with an economy based on retail and commerce. As a rapidly growing city with new industries, many Costa Mesa residents often find themselves entering partnerships with other members of their community in order to integrate the strengths of two or more investors for a single pursuit. However, partnerships are not immune to disagreements arising from a shared investment. Fortunately, a Costa Mesa Partition Lawyer can help explain the legal remedy of partition for those partners that wish to step away from their joint venture.

Partnership disagreements are not the only scenarios where a joint owner may seek partition of shared property. Costa Mesa Partition Lawyers usually find partition actions to be the best remedy for joint owners in disputes in four broad categories:

• Investor-Investor dispute over real property;
• Brother-Sister dispute over real property;
• Parent-Child dispute over real property; and
• Significant others dispute over real property;

Partition is a remedy favored in the law and may be effective either by an agreement of the co-owners or by judgment in an action in court. The purpose of partition is to allow a party to obtain severed title to some portion of the property owned in common. To the extent that the court determines partition is a suitable remedy, a Costa Mesa Partition Attorney knows the action may apply to a proceeding for partnership accounting and dissolution or in an action for partition of partnership property, so long as the rights of unsecured creditors are not prejudiced. Such is true even when the property is held in the name of one partner. As one court noted, “It has been held that parties may orally agree upon a joint partnership or joint venture pertaining to the business of engaging in mining ventures and the partnership, as such, may own mines or lease or sell them, and property of the partnership, although held in the name of one partner, may be partitioned in a partnership accounting.” (Brown v. Fairbanks (1953) 121 Cal.App.2d 432.)

In a partnership dissolution action, a court has the authority to make a distribution of the partnership’s real property. The California Code of Civil Procedure section 872.730 codifies prior case law to the effect that partition is an appropriate remedy where the affairs of the partnership are sufficiently settled and what remains is the division or sale of the property. A Costa Mesa Partition Lawyer can explain that this refers to the physical division of property held in common within the partnership. This remedy, however, is conditioned on the court’s finding that the partnership obligations do not require a partition by sale or that such a form of partition is a more favorable solution to the parties. (See Logoluso v. Logoluso (1965) 233 Cal.App.2d 523.)

At the Underwood Law Firm, our Costa Mesa Partition Attorneys are well-versed in the legal remedy of partition. Whether disagreements arise over the future of a shared property jointly owned by family and friends or partners who wish to dissociate and go separate ways, our Costa Mesa Partition Layers are ready to help.