Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Yes, because you can get so far behind in payments that you cannot redeem prior to a foreclosure sale and the house is sold in a depressed market. If you want out, you should consider a partition lawsuit.

Mr. Roach is absolutely right. When you fall behind on your payments all kinds of fees start adding on, plus unpaid interest building up, and it can quickly reach the point where you never catch up. On top of that it ruins your credit. Once you reach the point of a notice of default being recorded, it will show up as a foreclosure on your credit even if you later can and do cure the default. The proper way to force a sale is a partition lawsuit. It is much like a partnership dissolution and accounting proceeding. The court will order the property sold by the sheriff, the debt will be paid off, and then you each can make claims for reimbursement of certain contributions to the property which the court will rule on, and then the remaining proceeds are distributed. As you can imagine, the disadvantage of having a sheriff's sale, combined with the cost of a legal proceeding, almost universally brings the reluctant party to the table to negotiate either a buy-out or an agreed sale through a licensed agent who can get the best price.

I'd add a few comments: First, have you fully considered and carried out any orders made in the dissolution proceedings? Often, some order is made respecting disposition of co-owned or community property real estate. Next, many partition actions get settled out-of-court at an early stage of the litigation, which is usually a big plus in terms of time, stress and legal fees. Finally, when property is sold in a partition action, the sale can be either a public auction ("sheriff's sale") or a private sale conducted in the normal way through a real estate listing, whichever the court decides will be more beneficial to the parties (Code of Civil Procedure section 873.520).