Bottom line: If a co-owner won’t leave the house you own together, you are not stuck. On August 26, 2026, a Florida appeals court ordered a family home sold and the money divided, even though one co-owner wanted to stay. If you’re an heir or a co-owner waiting on someone who won’t move, do you know what your next step is?
This is real estate education, not legal advice. Rules vary by state.
Picture the house. A single-family home in Miami-Dade County. Three names on a 2013 deed, each holding one-third. One of the three lives there and wants to stay. The other two want their share.
When a co-owner won’t leave, everyone else’s money sits locked in the house. Maybe that sounds like your family. A parent’s house. A home you bought with a sibling. A house left in the middle of a divorce. Everyone on the deed once wanted the same thing. Now they don’t.
What did the court decide in Dominguez v. Suarez?
The two co-owners who wanted out asked the court for partition. The trial judge refused. Instead, the judge ordered the co-owner living there to take out a reverse mortgage, pay the others from it, and keep a life estate in the home.
The Third District Court of Appeal reversed that order on August 26, 2026.
Why did the court order the house sold?
Partition is a right. In Florida, co-owners of a house that can’t be split are entitled to partition. A court can refuse only in extreme cases, such as fraud, oppression or manifest injustice. Wanting to keep living in the house is not one of them.
The judge can’t invent a different deal. No one asked for the reverse mortgage or the life estate, so the court couldn’t order it.
The money has to be counted fairly. After the sale, the court must account for the home’s appreciation and for what each owner paid toward expenses.
The court sent the case back with instructions: sell the house, then do the accounting.
Can a co-owner force the sale of a house?
In this Florida case, yes. And these owners held title as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, the kind of deed many families believe locks everyone in. The court still ordered the sale.
Every state has its own partition rules, and the steps before a forced sale differ. Here is how partition sales work when co-owners can’t agree. What doesn’t change is the problem: a house tied up by one person’s refusal costs everyone on the deed time and money.
What should you do if a co-owner won’t leave?
When a co-owner won’t leave, start with where your case stands. Has a partition case or a probate case already been filed? Is a sale already ordered? Who is in charge of the house right now? Those answers decide what can happen next and how fast.
That is the work Resolution Brokers does every day for families in Los Angeles County and Orange County: court-ordered sales in partition, probate, trust and divorce cases, worked from the court file forward.
Where to go from here
If your family’s house is in Los Angeles or Orange County and the case is already in court, send your court case number, your name and your phone number or email to deric@theresolutionbrokers.com. With the case number, we can look up where your case stands and tell you the way forward.
The house will not wait forever, and neither should you.
Sources
- Norma Dominguez, et al. v. Nancy Suarez, No. 3D25-0823 (Fla. 3d DCA, opinion filed August 26, 2026). Not final until disposition of any timely filed motion for rehearing. https://law.co/app/cases/9000006907
- Florida Statutes § 64.051 (Partition — Judgment). https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/64.051