OT: Selling a partnership

[teddysnips]

Sorry to post OT but someone here might have an idea.

My late mother and her late brother (my uncle) jointly owned a piece of land. The land is currently owned by my three siblings and myself, and my uncle's wife (she owns half, we each own one eighth).

It seems sensible to wind up this arrangement as soon as possible. My aunt is keen for us to sell our 4 x 1/8 shares as a "partnership" - in other words, to find a buyer interested in owning the land jointly with my aunt. We, my siblings and I, fear that finding such a buyer would be tough, and that we would be unlikely to realise the true value of our shares in the land. Instead, we would prefer to divide the land physically, and sell our half. Obviously, we would have to agree with my aunt how to divide it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

[Owain]

Either your aunt buys out your share of the asset, or you sell the whole asset and give her half the money.

If the former, you and your aunt get separate professional valuations, and split the difference.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. mostly bad ones.

Now it just happens I know someone who was in a similar position.

Four brothers, one of whom didn't want to sell..on any account. He was farming the land badly, but it was his only livelihood.

They managed to get him to agree to an auction, on the condition that it had to reach a silly price.

Then they simply bid for it themselves at that silly price, and essentially bought him out at a premium. (He had not agreed to being bought out at a premium, and thought the auction would simply fail. He was somewhat stupid).

Then sold the land as a block.

Needless to say this was complicated, and expensive in lawyer time.

The first thing to do is look at the partnership terms, and see what's in them.

There may be 'fair price' disposal rights.

However most of the experience from the above situation was that you cant force people in a partnership to do anything. You need mutual agreement. That often costs a lot of money of one member wants to play silly buggers, and of course, mostly they do.

I would say that whatever you want to do will need a legally binding agreement with your aunts signature on it. That means a lawyer, and her co-operation. How you get that is down to the individual psychology.

If your aunt wants, she can simply refuse to do anything.

[TheScullster]

wrote

I can't see what difference it makes to your aunt whether you 4 own half or some other party does! Or are there elements or "the four" that want out?

Phil

[Andy Hall]

It would depend on anticipated future outcome.

- Perhaps the land would be more valuable as a combined lot

- Perhaps future use, planning etc. would.

As I read it, at present the land is legally one parcel from the Land Registry perspective with the ownership split 50%, and 4 x 12.5% in partnership shares. The OP's proposal is to divide the land into two registered parcels and then for him and siblings to sell their parcel.

Getting from here to there involves agreement on how to carve up the land into the two legal parcels. It may not just be a 50/50 split by area, for example.

The alternative business arrangement would be to find an alternate for the 4 sibling partners in the current arrangement. As the OP, says, that would be challenging because such a new partner may not be able to sell his interest without agreement by the aunt. That's a very different proposition to buying and selling a separate legal parcel in the market.

A more sensible approach may be for all parties to agree to sell and then for the aunt to re-invest the proceeds from her share of the sale.

Hopefully, there are provisions in the partnership agreement for all of this, but the split arangement suggests that whatever is done is not going to be easy wihout agreement from all participants.