Nebraska Partition Law

When two or more parties are joint owners of a single home or piece of property, each party has a right to possess the whole premises. However, sometimes one or more parties are ousted, or they simply no longer wish to reside together or engage in business together. When this happens, any party has the absolute right to divide the property under Nebraska partition law. A partition can be voluntary if the parties can agree to a contractual agreement to split up the land. If not, they may have to seek a court order, also called a judicial partition.

There are two ways that the land can be divided in Nebraska. It can be partitioned in kind, which is a physical “carving out” of separate portions of the land for each party to own individually. This is usually reserved for vacant tracts of land, as it would be difficult to divide a structure or home. Partition by sale forces a sale at auction of the property, and the owners split the proceeds according to the type of tenancy they had when they owned the property. If they owned the property as joint tenants, they will have to divide the property in equal shares. However, if they were tenants in common, they can divide the property according to the percentage of ownership they originally had.

Nebraska is a title theory state, which means that any bank or lender with a mortgage has title to the property though a deed of trust. When a petition for partition is filed, the lender is a necessary party to the litigation. If you own land or homes in Nebraska, and you no longer wish to be a co-owner, you should speak with an attorney about filing a Nebraska partition action.