Article: Land trust makes it difficult to dissolve a joint tenancy

Several times during the past few years I've written about how a joint tenancy of real estate is so fragile that one joint tenant can secretly break it and automatically convert the joint tenancy to a tenancy in common.

Many readers were shocked. They were concerned because a secret, unilateral breaking of the joint tenancy would deprive them of the right of survivorship upon the death of the other co-owner.

Let's say a man and his wife originally owned their home or some income property in joint tenancy. One of them expects that if the other dies, he or she, through the right of survivorship, would become the sole owner of all the property.

However, if the joint tenancy had been ...

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