4.1 Property Ownership in New York

Co-Ownership Forms in New York

New York recognizes three concurrent ownership forms. The default when a deed names two or more unmarried grantees without specifying is tenancy in common (TIC) — New York abolished the common-law presumption of joint tenancy, so survivorship must be expressly stated ("as joint tenants with right of survivorship").

Tenancy in Common (TIC)

Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship (JTWROS)

On death, a joint tenant's interest passes automatically to the survivors, bypassing probate. It must be expressly created and requires the four unities.

The Four Unities — TTIP

Trap: If one joint tenant sells their interest, that buyer becomes a tenant in common with the remaining joint tenants — the unities of time and title are broken for the new owner. The original joint tenants keep survivorship among themselves.

Tenancy by the Entirety

Reserved for married couples (and, since 2011, legally married same-sex couples). It carries automatic survivorship plus creditor protection: a creditor holding a judgment against only one spouse generally cannot force partition or sale of the home. Neither spouse can sever or convey their interest unilaterally — both must sign. Divorce converts it to a tenancy in common.

Separate-Property State (Equitable Distribution)

New York is a separate-property state, not a community-property state. In divorce, marital property (acquired during marriage) is divided by equitable distribution — what the court deems fair after weighing factors like income, contributions, and duration — which is frequently not a 50/50 split. Separate property (owned before marriage, or received by gift/inheritance) generally stays with its owner.

Exam trap: A multistate question may say a married couple's home is automatically split 50/50. In New York that is wrong — the court applies fairness, not an equal-division rule.

Co-ops vs. Condos — The NYC Distinction

Cooperatives dominate older NYC housing stock. A co-op buyer does not buy real property; they buy shares in the cooperative corporation that owns the building, paired with a proprietary lease granting the right to occupy a unit. Because shares are personal property, financing is a share loan, not a mortgage, and the board can reject buyers (subject to fair-housing law).

Worked example: A buyer signs to purchase a co-op for $600,000. At closing she receives a stock certificate for 450 shares and a proprietary lease for Apartment 7B; her lender records a UCC-1 financing statement on the shares rather than a mortgage on real property. If the same unit were a condo, she would receive a deed and her lender would record a mortgage. Knowing this difference — deed/mortgage versus shares/lease — is one of the most heavily tested NY-specific points.

Severance, Partition, and Practical Scenarios

Understanding how co-ownership ends is as testable as how it begins. A joint tenancy is severed the moment any one of the four unities is broken. The most common severance is a sale: when one joint tenant conveys to an outsider, that outsider takes as a tenant in common, while any remaining joint tenants keep survivorship among themselves.

How Joint Tenancy Is Severed

Any co-tenant who cannot agree with the others may bring a partition action. The court first tries partition in kind (physically dividing the land); if that is impractical — as with a single house — it orders partition by sale and divides the proceeds according to each owner's share.

Scenario: Three friends own a building as joint tenants. One dies, leaving a will giving "all my property to my brother." The brother gets nothing in this building — survivorship overrides the will, so the two surviving friends now own the whole property as joint tenants. This is a classic exam fact pattern testing whether you know survivorship trumps testamentary intent.

Co-op Boards and Fair Housing

A co-op board's broad approval power is real but not unlimited. A board may reject a buyer for financial reasons (insufficient post-closing liquidity, weak debt-to-income) but may never reject based on a protected class under federal, state, or NYC fair-housing law — race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, familial status, and, in New York, additional classes such as source of income, age, marital status, and lawful occupation. A board generally need not state its reasons, which is why source-of-income and disability claims are the most litigated co-op issues.

Salespersons must counsel clients on these realities without steering.