Undivided interest
A share of the whole of a property, rather than a piece of it. A one-third interest is not one third of the land.
What it means
When several people inherit a property as tenants in common, each of them owns a fraction of the entire thing. A person with a quarter interest does not own a quarter of the house or a named corner of the land; they own a quarter of all of it, and so does everybody else own their fraction of all of it.
That has consequences people do not expect. Each co-owner generally has the right to use the whole property, so one relative living in the house is not doing anything wrong by being there. No co-owner can sell the property without the others, but each can sell their own undivided share to anybody, including a stranger. And each can ask a court to end the arrangement.
Shares also do not stay put. When a co-owner dies, their fraction passes to their own heirs, so a property owned by three siblings becomes a property owned by eleven cousins without anybody doing anything.
Why it matters
The arithmetic of shares is what makes inherited property hard to manage: the more owners there are, the harder it is to get agreement about anything, and agreement is required for almost everything.
One person's fractional share, sold to an outsider, brings the outsider inside the ownership with all of a co-owner's rights.
When you are likely to meet it
- When several children inherit one house.
- When somebody asks whether they can sell "their part".
- When cousins are described as each owning a percentage of family land.