Florida Partition Action Lawyer

What a Partition Action Actually Does

A partition action ends co-ownership of real property by court order. Any co-owner can file one, and the others cannot stop it by declining to participate. That is what makes partition the pressure point in almost every inherited-property dispute in Florida. One person who wants out can put the whole property in front of a judge.

The court has two ways to end the co-ownership. It can divide the land into separately titled parcels, which the statute calls partition in kind. Or it can order the property sold and split the money, which is partition by sale. Everything that matters in one of these cases comes down to which of those two happens, and, when the answer is a sale, who gets to buy first.

The complaint itself has to describe the land, name the owners and where they live, and state how much each one holds. Where a name, an address or a share is genuinely unknown, the complaint says so and the case proceeds as though those people were named. That provision is why partition works at all for property that has passed through two or three generations without a probate, which is the situation this page is really about. If title has not been sorted out yet, start with whether a probate is required, because partition divides ownership rather than establishing it.

Heirs Property and Why 2020 Changed Everything

Florida adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act in chapter 2020-55, and it applies to every partition action filed on or after July 1, 2020. It changed the outcome of these cases substantially, and many people still working from older advice do not know it exists.

The reason it was written is a specific abuse. An investor buys one heir's fractional interest for a small amount, becomes a cotenant, files for partition, and forces the family property to auction where it sells for a fraction of its value. The investor recovers far more than he paid and the family loses land it held for generations. Florida is one of the states that decided to stop that.

The protections turn on whether the property is heirs property, which is a defined term with three requirements, all measured as of the filing of the partition action. First, the property is held in tenancy in common. Second, there is no agreement in a record binding all the cotenants that governs partition of the property. Third, one or more of the cotenants acquired title from a relative, living or deceased. On top of those, one of three ownership tests has to be met: twenty percent or more of the interests are held by cotenants who are relatives, or twenty percent or more are held by one individual who acquired title from a relative, or twenty percent or more of the cotenants are relatives.

The court makes this determination before it reaches the merits. If the property is heirs property, it must be partitioned under the heirs property rules unless all of the cotenants agree otherwise in a record. A cotenant who wants the old law to apply needs unanimous written agreement, which in a family fight is not going to happen.

The Buyout Right That Saves the House

This is the provision that decides most of these cases, and it runs on a clock.

When a cotenant has asked for partition by sale, the court first determines the fair market value of the property. It does that by appointing a disinterested real estate appraiser licensed in Florida to value the property as if a single owner held the whole fee simple. If all the cotenants have already agreed on a value or on a method of valuing it, the court adopts that instead. If the cost of an appraisal would outweigh what it adds, the court holds an evidentiary hearing and sets the value itself.

Once there is an appraisal, the court sends every party with a known address a notice within ten days stating the appraised value, that the appraisal is available at the clerk's office, and that a party has thirty days to file a written objection stating the grounds. The court then holds a hearing no sooner than thirty-one days after that notice went out, whether or not anyone objected, and it can consider other evidence of value alongside the appraisal. After that hearing, and before it touches the merits of the partition, the court fixes the value.

Then the buyout opens. The court notifies the parties that any cotenant except the ones who asked for a sale may buy all of the interests of the ones who did. You have forty-five days from that notice to tell the court you elect to buy. The price is arithmetic rather than negotiation. It is the value of the entire parcel multiplied by that cotenant's fractional ownership. A one-quarter interest in a property valued at $480,000 costs $120,000.

If more than one of you elects, the court divides the right to buy among you in proportion to what each of you already owns relative to the total held by everyone electing. Once the court tells you what you owe, it sets a payment date no sooner than sixty days out, and the money is paid into the court rather than to the selling cotenant. Pay on time and the court enters a judgment reallocating the interests, disburses the funds, and directs the clerk to record the judgment in the county's official records.

The statute also plans for the cotenant who elects and then cannot come up with the money. If some pay and some do not, the court tells the ones who paid what interest is left and what it costs, and they get twenty days to buy the remainder. If nobody pays, the case returns to the choice between dividing the property and selling it, as though the buyout had never been offered.

Dividing the Land Instead of Selling It

Under the heirs property rules the court starts from division, not sale. If any cotenant asked for partition in kind, or if the buyout did not clear out everyone who wanted a sale, the court enters a judgment of partition in kind unless it is satisfied that commissioners appointed by the court have considered the statutory factors and found that dividing the property would prejudice the cotenants as a group. Commissioners in an heirs property case have to be disinterested and impartial, and cannot be parties to or participants in the action.

Two features of this are worth knowing before you decide what to ask for. The court must approve a request by two or more parties to have their individual interests aggregated, so siblings who want to stay in together can be treated as one block, and a division that makes no sense in quarters may make sense in halves. And where a division cannot come out exactly even, the court can order one cotenant to pay another so that the parcels plus the payments are just and proportionate to the fractional interests.

A judgment of partition in kind has to contain the legal description of the property before division, the legal description of each new parcel, and the name of each parcel's owner, and the clerk records it. Where some owners are unknown, unlocatable or defaulted and their interests were not bought out, the court allocates them a combined portion that stays undivided.

Only if the court does not order partition in kind does it order a sale. And if nobody asked for a sale in the first place, the court dismisses the action rather than selling the property.

The Seven Things the Court Weighs

The commissioners deciding whether division would prejudice the owners as a group work from a list written into the statute. There are seven items on it.

• Whether the property can practicably be divided among the cotenants at all.
• Whether division would cost the group money. The test is whether the combined fair market value of the resulting parcels would be materially less than the value of the property sold whole, taking into account the conditions a court-ordered sale would likely happen under.
• How long the family has held it. Evidence of the collective duration of ownership or possession by a cotenant and predecessors in title or possession who are or were relatives.
• Sentimental attachment, including attachment arising because the property has ancestral or other unique or special value to a cotenant.
• The use someone is making of it now, and the degree of harm if that cotenant could not continue that use.
• Who has been carrying it. The degree to which cotenants have contributed their pro rata share of property taxes, insurance and other ownership expenses, or contributed to physical improvement, maintenance or upkeep.
• Any other relevant factor.

The statute then says something that matters in practice more than the list itself. The commissioners may not treat any one of these factors as dispositive without weighing the totality of all relevant factors and circumstances. So an opposing cotenant who argues that the parcel is simply too small to divide has not won the point by saying it. He has to survive the rest of the list, including the sentimental and ancestral value of the property to the people who want to keep it.

If It Does Sell, How the Sale Runs

A court-ordered sale of heirs property has to be an open-market sale unless the court finds that sealed bids or an auction would be more economically advantageous and in the best interest of the cotenants as a group.

For an open-market sale, the parties have ten days after the sale order to agree on a real estate broker licensed in Florida. Agree, and the court appoints your broker and sets a reasonable commission. Fail to agree, and the court appoints a disinterested one and sets the commission itself. Either way, the broker has to offer the property in a commercially reasonable manner at a price no lower than the value the court determined, on terms the court sets. That floor is the heart of the reform.

If the broker gets an offer at or above that value within a reasonable time, the sale closes under ordinary Florida law. If the broker cannot, the court holds a hearing and has three choices. It can approve the highest outstanding offer, it can redetermine the value and keep the property on the market longer, or it can order a sale by sealed bids or auction. A cotenant who is entitled to a share of the proceeds and who buys at the sale gets a credit against the price equal to that share.

Who Paid the Taxes All Those Years

In most inherited-property fights one person has been carrying the property. They paid the taxes, kept the insurance current, replaced the roof, and sometimes lived there and maintained it while everyone else did nothing and now wants a quarter of the proceeds.

Florida handles that through the equitable accounting, and you have to request it. The statute defines it as considering the contributions and adjustments of accounts between cotenants which relate to the real property, drawing on the general partition accounting statute and the common law. On the request of any cotenant, the court determines the amount of the equitable accounting and then adjusts the case accordingly. The language covering what gets adjusted is deliberately wide: any price, purchase price, apportioned price, buyout, judgment or partition granted under the heirs property part.

Two practical consequences follow. The buyout price is not necessarily the raw arithmetic of value times fraction, because the accounting can move it. And the records matter more than the memories. Cancelled checks, tax receipts, insurance declarations and contractor invoices are what carry these claims. A sibling who paid $60,000 of taxes and repairs over twelve years and kept the paperwork is in a materially different position from one who paid the same money in cash and kept nothing.

The Deadlines That Decide Who Keeps It

These cases are lost on the calendar more often than on the merits. The ones that matter most:

• Thirty days to object to the appraisal. The clock runs from the date the court sends notice of the appraised value. That value becomes the buyout price for every share in the case, so it is the number to fight about if it is wrong.
• Forty-five days to elect the buyout. This is the one that decides whether the family keeps the property. It runs from the notice the court sends after determining value, and electing costs you nothing at that stage because payment comes later.
• Forty-five days to reach the absent owners. Running from the same buyout notice, a cotenant entitled to buy can ask the court to authorize purchasing the interests of cotenants who were served but never appeared. The court can allow it after a hearing, on terms it finds fair and reasonable, priced off the court's determination of value.
• Sixty days at minimum to fund it. The court sets the payment date no sooner than sixty days after telling you what you owe. Sixty days is not long to arrange financing against property you do not yet fully own, which is why the lender conversation should start the week you elect.
• Twenty days to cover a defaulting cotenant. If one of the electing owners fails to pay, the ones who paid get twenty days to buy the remaining interest outright.
• Ten days to agree on the broker. If a sale is ordered, this is your only chance to choose who lists the property rather than accepting the court's appointee.

What a Partition Case Costs

Partition is not flat-fee work. The cost depends on whether the heirs property determination is contested, whether an appraisal is fought over, and whether the case ends at the buyout or runs through commissioners to a sale. We quote it at the consult once we have seen the deed, the death certificates and whatever probate history exists.

Two things are worth saying about the economics before you spend anything. A significant share of these matters end at the buyout, which is a shorter engagement than a contested partition trial, and the earlier a lawyer is involved the more likely that is the outcome. And a partition case carries its own costs into the property itself, including the court-appointed appraiser, the commissioners and the broker's commission, all of which come out of value that would otherwise be divided among the owners. The 30-minute consult is free, and part of what it is for is telling you honestly whether the property is worth the fight.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The investor who bought one sibling's share. Five siblings inherit their mother's Florida house. One sells his fifth to a company that buys fractional interests, and the company files for partition by sale expecting an auction. The court determines the property is heirs property, because the other four acquired title from a relative and relatives hold well over twenty percent. The four elect the buyout inside the forty-five days, pay the appraised value of the one-fifth interest into the court registry, and the company is out at exactly what its share was worth.

The brother who paid for everything. Three siblings hold a Gulf Coast property in common. One has paid the taxes and insurance for eleven years and replaced the roof twice while the other two contributed nothing. When one of them files for partition by sale, he requests an equitable accounting alongside his buyout election. The documented contributions reduce what he owes for their interests, and the case settles with the property in his name and the accounting credited against the price.

Related Guides

• Do I need probate in Florida, the first question when a co-owner has died and title never moved.
• Florida intestate succession, the statutory table that decides the fractional shares when there was no will.
• Florida summary administration, the shorter probate route that often precedes a partition on smaller estates.
• Florida probate and trust litigation, where partition sits alongside will contests and fiduciary claims.
• Florida probate cost calculator, if a probate has to be opened before the partition can proceed.
• Florida quiet title actions, where the problem is a defect in the chain of title rather than a disagreement among the owners.
• Florida lady bird deed, the planning tool that keeps the next generation out of this situation entirely.

Can a Court Order Something Other Than a Sale?

In 14 years of law practice, the thing people most want to know about a partition case is whether a judge can simply order some other outcome instead of selling the property.

I came across a Florida decision only days ago that answers it. Three people each owned an undivided one-third of a single-family home, held with rights of survivorship under a 2013 deed. The trial judge refused to order partition and instead directed the co-owner living there to take a reverse mortgage for the maximum available amount, pay the net proceeds to the other two, and sign a deed reserving an enhanced life estate to herself with the remainder to them.

That order was reversed, and I think the reasoning matters more here than the result. Partition is equitable and a trial court has room to work, but the order contained no findings of manifest injustice, fraud or oppression, and without those findings the improvised remedy could not stand.

I read that as a useful boundary running in both directions, and I raise it early with anybody weighing a partition suit. A judge is not going to invent a financing arrangement to keep somebody in a house because it feels fairer. And a co-owner who wants an outcome other than a sale has to build the record that supports it rather than hoping the court improvises.

Avoid walking into a partition case assuming the house will simply be divided or that a judge will find a way to let you stay. Many cases like this keep coming up among siblings who inherited a home together, and in my experience the time to settle who keeps it is well before anybody files.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. Any case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §64.041 (partition complaint: description of the lands, names and residences of owners, quantity held by each; unknown names, residences or interests stated as such, and the action may proceed as though unknown persons were named). (retrieved 2026-06-07)
• Fla. Stat. §64.201 (short title, Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act); §64.202 (definitions, including "heirs property" at (6): tenancy in common, no record agreement binding all cotenants governing partition, one or more cotenants acquired title from a relative, and one of the three twenty-percent tests; "equitable accounting" at (5); "partition in kind" at (8)). Enacted by ch. 2020-55, s. 2. (retrieved 2026-06-07)
• Fla. Stat. §64.203 (applies to partition actions filed on or after July 1, 2020; the court determines whether the property is heirs property and, if it is, the property must be partitioned under this part unless all cotenants agree otherwise in a record); §64.205 (commissioners must be disinterested and impartial and not parties to or participants in the action). (retrieved 2026-06-07)
• Fla. Stat. §64.206 (determination of value: court-ordered appraisal by a disinterested Florida-licensed appraiser valuing sole ownership of the fee simple; notice within 10 days of filing; 30 days to object; hearing no sooner than 31 days after notice; value determined before the merits; equitable accounting on the request of any cotenant, adjusting any price, purchase price, apportioned price, buyout, judgment or partition). (retrieved 2026-06-07)
• Fla. Stat. §64.207 (cotenant buyout: notice to parties; 45 days to elect; price is the parcel value under §64.206 multiplied by the selling cotenant's fractional ownership; allocation among multiple electing cotenants by existing fractional ownership; payment into court on a date no sooner than 60 days after notice; 20 days for paying cotenants to cover a defaulting one; 45 days to request authorization to purchase the interests of served but non-appearing cotenants, allowed after hearing on fair and reasonable terms). (retrieved 2026-06-07)
• Fla. Stat. §64.208 (partition in kind unless commissioners consider the §64.209 factors and find prejudice to the cotenants as a group; court shall approve a request by two or more parties to aggregate their interests; owelty payments to make the division just and proportionate; judgment contents and recording; undivided allocation for unknown, unlocatable or defaulted cotenants; dismissal where no cotenant requested a sale); §64.209 (the seven considerations, including collective duration of family ownership, sentimental and ancestral value, current lawful use, and contribution to taxes, insurance and upkeep; no single factor dispositive without weighing the totality). (retrieved 2026-06-07)
• Fla. Stat. §64.210 (open-market sale required unless sealed bids or auction would be more economically advantageous and in the best interest of the cotenants as a group; 10 days for the parties to agree on a Florida-licensed broker; broker must offer the property in a commercially reasonable manner at a price no lower than the determination of value; court options if no qualifying offer arrives; credit against price for a purchaser entitled to a share of proceeds). (retrieved 2026-06-07)

Updated on August 21, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Deadlines and outcomes depend on the specific facts; past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.