ABSTRACT
Co-owners, whether joint tenants or tenants in common, may agree voluntarily to put an end to the co-ownership by dividing up the property into separate parcels, each former co-owner henceforth becoming a single owner of his parcel. This process is known as ‘partition’. At common law, if the co-owners could not agree, there was no right in any of them to compel the others to submit to such partition. However, the Partition Acts 1539 and 1540 (UK) conferred a statutory right to bring an action to compel partition, so that one co-owner, whether joint tenant or tenant in common, could insist upon a partition, however inconvenient it might be to the other co-owners;47 later, the Partition Act 1868 conferred on the court a power to decree a sale of the land instead of partition, which would be desirable where, for instance, the property was too small to be conveniently or sensibly divided up between the co-owners.
