Hi, I’m Philip Hundl. My law practice in Texas focuses on representing landowners in land partition matters, and also facing condemnation. Been, now, talking about heirs, property partitions, Section 23A; and we’re at the part where, section 23A.007, is the co-tenant buyout.
And, you know, anyone that’s interested in this, obviously, your attorney will read this section and explain it to you, read it again, and explain it to you. It’s very methodical, the process, but I’m just going to give you a gist of, you know, what the 23A.007 is.
After the court has appointed an appraiser, the appraiser has come up with a determination of value. And no one has, either they’ve objected to the valuation or not, and the court has determined this’s a fair market valuation of the property, and there’s a co-tenant that has requested to sell the land.
Then there’s this option to buy that particular co-tenant out, and it would be at a pro rata share of the valuation unless the court has determined that there needs to be some offsets or credits. But there’s this option to, or this possibility, of buying a co-tenant out.
Now, you know, this doesn’t require co-tenants to sell if they’re not wishing to sell. If they’re wanting to just do a partition in kind, then they can do that. Let’s kind of move on to the next step, then.
And, you know, once again, after you get through the steps in the co-tenant buyout, and the reason why I say refer to the sections, because there’s some timing and timeframes, and notices to everyone that’re co-tenants or co-owners, that’s really important.
So once you get past the co-tenant buyout option, then you can move on to, almost, essentially, the first trial in the normal, chapter 23 non-heirs proceeding. And so at that point, the court, you know, is tasked with can this land be partitioned in kind? If so, okay, and what’re the interests still?
Maybe some of the co-tenants were purchased or bought out. And so, then the court is going to declare who owns what interest now, after this co-tenant buyout option, or provision, or process went through. And then also, the court’s going to take into consideration, also, in the partition in kind, if he makes that determination, what’s set out in 23A.009.
It’s fairly lengthy, but it goes into, you know, who’s been involved with the property, or their connection to the property, takes into consideration some of those factors as well. So, hope that’s helpful.
Once again, heirs property partitions, I always call them partitions plus, because there’s additional steps involved. And you have to be aware of the steps, and frankly, you know, to keep the case on track, you really have to set timelines for yourself. If not, the case will get really bogged down because of all the different, or not deadlines, but all the different steps.
So with that, good luck.
