Me and a friend bought our property in 1989. (sole seperate interest). In 1991, my friend stopped making his payments. In 1997, my friend ...

Question

Me and a friend bought our property in 1989. (sole & seperate interest). In 1991, my friend stopped making his payments. In 1997, my friend died. In 2005, I paided the property off. I now want to sale the property but can't do so untill I get my friends name of the title. My question is how do I do this?

Answer

You have a real title mess on your hands. Unless you can find your friend's heirs, and get them to probate the estate and then deed the property to you, you are going to have to file some sort of a combined partition and quiet title action against his estate and heirs. There is no way around hiring a lawyer on this one. I have 25 years of real estate law experience, including the better part of a decade litigating title issues for the parent company of Chicago Title and Fidelity National Title. I maintain facilities in Sacramento to serve clients in your area. If I can be of assistance, feel free to contact me.

Answer

I'm pretty much in agreement with Mr. McCormick. You'll need to get this matter before a judge in the county (Sacramento?) where the property is located, to obtain orders quieting title in your name and, perhaps, allowing you to buy out the interest, if any, of your co-owner's heir(s).

This would require filing a single lawsuit, requesting two, possibly more, types of affirmative relief: quieting title and determining and disposing of any conflicting claims (by partition or otherwise). Writing the suit and getting it served on all necessary parties would be half the battle. Fortunately, it's pretty mechanical, although it may involve such tehniques as serving certain unknown or difficult-to-locate parties by publication of newspaper notices, etc.

After the names of all possible claimants have been determined and the suit has been served on them, the trial and judgment phases are likely to be slow but simple. Your payment of most of the mortgage makes it likely that, even if one or more heirs does respond and show up, the court would award most or all ownership to you (and you could buy out any heir with a valid claim).

I have handled real-estate cases economically and successfully for clients from Siskiyou to Imperial County and most places in between. Please contact me for particulars if you'd like my proposal on this one.