Yes. If you inherited a house or land in Arizona together with other people and you can’t agree on what to do with it, you generally don’t have to stay stuck. Any co-owner can ask a court to divide the property or order it sold, and you don’t need the other owners’ permission to start.
How heirs end up sharing property
When someone dies owning Arizona real estate, the property can pass to more than one person at once — through a will, through a beneficiary deed, or, when there’s no will, through Arizona’s intestate succession rules. The heirs take title together. Each of you owns an undivided fractional share of the whole property rather than a specific room or acre, and each share carries the same basic right: the right to ask a court to end the co-ownership.
That right matters because inherited property often leads to disagreement. One sibling wants to sell and take the cash. Another wants to keep the house in the family. A third has been living in it, or paying the taxes, or wants to buy everyone else out but can’t agree on a price. Nobody has a veto, and no one is required to keep money tied up in a property they don’t want.
What a partition action does
A partition action is the court process for splitting up jointly owned real property. Under Arizona’s partition statute (A.R.S. § 12-1211 and following), any owner or claimant of an interest in the property can file a complaint in the superior court of the county where the property sits. Once it’s filed, the case generally ends in one of a few ways:
- Sale. The court orders the property sold and the net proceeds divided in proportion to ownership.
- Division in kind. If the land can be split fairly — more realistic with raw land than with one home — each owner receives a separate, titled piece.
- Buyout. One or more owners buy out the others by agreement, which ends the case without a forced sale.
- Accounting. The court can adjust each owner’s share to account for unequal payment of the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, repairs, or improvements, and sometimes for the fair rental value when one owner had the property to themselves.
The Heirs Property Act adds protections
In 2024 Arizona adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (A.R.S. § 12-3401, et seq.). It applies when the property is held by tenants in common, there’s no written agreement controlling how it gets divided, and at least one co-owner inherited their share from a relative — which describes most inherited-property disputes.
When the Act applies, the court first orders an appraisal by a neutral Arizona appraiser to set fair market value. The co-owners who did not ask for the sale then get the first chance to buy out the share of the co-owner who did, at that appraised value, within a set timeframe. Only if no one exercises that buyout right does the property go to sale.
Related: How to remove a co-owner from a house title in Arizona · What information should a co-owner gather for a partition action
For the full overview, see the Arizona partition actions guide. To speak with Scott, request a free consultation.