Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: you cannot make a co-owner sell by insisting — but you are not stuck either. The realistic ladder, cheapest first: (1) a buyout at appraised value, which turns an argument into arithmetic; (2) a written co-ownership agreement (who pays taxes and insurance, who can occupy, what triggers a future sale); (3) renting it out and splitting income by ownership share; (4) selling your fractional share (legal in principle, punishing in practice — the discount is severe); and (5) a partition action, where a court orders the sale or division — the one option nobody can veto.
What partition actually means before you threaten it
Any co-owner can generally file one; courts historically preferred physical division for land but order a SALE for a single house, and the costs — attorneys, referees, commissions — come out of everyone’s equity. About half the states have adopted heirs’-property protections (the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act) that add appraisal rights and a family buy-first window before any forced sale of inherited property — strongest where the property came down through the family without a will. Translation: the sibling threatening partition usually nets less than the buyout they refused, which is precisely why running the numbers and showing them is the strongest move in the conversation. If the estate is somehow still open, check the no-sale route first — it moots the fight entirely.