Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: I Am On Title Only

This is an extremely complicated area of the law; entire treatises have been written about this. It is impossible to fully answer your question. I am not sure what you mean by being on title only with a couple as joint tenancy. You are the only one on title? Or you are holding title with two others as joint tenants? If all three of you hold at joint tenants, then any one of you can force a sale of the property (via court action), and as a general rule, after expenses of the sale, the proceeds would be split three ways. Any one of you can assign or transfer your 1/3 interest without the consent of the other. However, they would not be able to "sell" the house without your consent. They cannot pass good title to the entire property; it would never make it through escrow (and no title company would issue a policy).

If the property were foreclosed upon by a creditor, the proceeds are split as set out above (three ways), but if there are liens which attach to one (or both) of them, then you would be credited with that much. Similarly, each joint tenant has rights against the other joint tenants for claims related to waste, profit, rental, maintenance, etc., etc. (Again, it gets very comlicated very quicly.)

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