Real Property Law
Cal. Real. Prop. Journal VOLUME 43, ISSUE 1, AUGUST 2025
Content
- 2024-2025 Executive Committee of the Real Property Law Section
- A Practical Guide To the New Laws Pertaining To California's Residential Homeowners Associations
- AN INTRODUCTION TO DEMYSTIFYING CALIFORNIA COASTAL LAW FOR CALIFORNIA REAL PROPERTY ATTORNEYS "A VERY BRIEF HISTORY" (A WORKING WHITE PAPER SERIES) PART 1
- Chair Letter
- Editorial Board
- Inside This Issue
- Letter From the Editor
- Save Me Out At the Ball Game: Is Being a Baseball Fan a Contact Sport? Home Run Balls, Abandoned Property, and Violence In the Stadium
- Let My People Go: a Proposal To Update and Reform California Partition Law
LET MY PEOPLE GO: A PROPOSAL TO UPDATE AND REFORM CALIFORNIA PARTITION LAW
Written by Elijah Underwood*
California is not Alabama, and the TransAmerica building is not the same as a farm in middle Tennessee. Neither of these statements is remarkable, but the recent change in the partition law01 treats them identically. This is a mistake.
Currently, California partition law contains provisions crafted to solve problems relating to the loss of generationally owned farmland resulting over the course of a century in Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina. These changes to the law, however, fail to expressly limit its scope to such agricultural property, or to address the reasons that people seek a partition remedy in the 21st century.
As a result, even though the Law Revision Commission explicitly cautioned that the Partition of Real Property Act (the "Act")02 should not apply to "commercial" or "investment" property, it does. Now, office buildings in downtown Los Angeles, multi-family property in San Francisco, mansions in La Jolla, and vacation rentals in Palm Springs are subject to laws for which they were never intended.