Joint Ownership in France: Indivision, the 2/3 Majority, and When a Sale Can Be Forced

Property held jointly in France, en indivision, cannot always be sold on a bare two-thirds vote, but it is not always locked to unanimity either. Article 815-3 gives a two-thirds majority power over administration only. Article 815-5-1 lets that same majority ask a court to authorize selling the property itself, on specific conditions.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This article presents general legal information, not legal advice.

Jurisdiction scope: This article describes indivision under French domestic property and succession law, the Code civil, as it applies in France. It does not address the law of any other country, and readers with co-owned property outside France should not assume these rules apply there.

What Indivision Is and How It Arises

Indivision is a common feature of property and succession law in France: the legal situation in which more than one person owns undivided rights over the same property, rather than each person owning a physically separate part of it. Each co-owner, called an indivisaire, holds a fractional share of the whole, expressed as a proportion such as one half or one third, rather than a specific room, floor, or plot.

Indivision most commonly arises in two situations. The first is a succession: when several heirs inherit the same property, whether a house, an apartment, or a bank account, they typically hold it in indivision from the moment the succession opens until the estate is formally divided among them, and the property remains subject to the reserved share described on the forced heirship page even while it stays undivided. The second is a joint purchase: a couple, whether married under certain property regimes, in a civil partnership, or simply living together, or a group of friends or relatives, can buy a property together outside marriage, and in doing so become co-owners in indivision rather than under a marital property regime.

The underlying rules covered on this page apply to both situations, since the Code civil provisions on indivision are not limited to inherited property. Readers dealing with an inherited property in particular may also find the inheritance overview page and the page on writing a will in France useful background, since a will or the absence of one is often what places heirs into indivision in the first place.

Indivision is, by design, meant to be a transitional state rather than a permanent way of holding property. The Code civil gives co-owners tools to manage the property while the indivision lasts, and it gives every co-owner more than one route toward ending it, including, since 2020, a route that lets a two-thirds majority ask a court to authorize selling the property itself. Those routes are covered in detail below. Whether an indivision lasts a few months or many years depends largely on whether, and how, the co-owners choose to use them.

The Core Principle: No One Can Be Forced to Remain in Indivision (Art. 815)

Article 815 of the Code civil states a principle that runs through the rest of French indivision law: no one can be forced to remain in indivision, and partition can always be requested, unless it has been suspended by a court judgment or by an agreement among the co-owners, known as a convention d'indivision.

In practice, this means indivision is treated by the Code civil as a situation that should be resolved rather than one that continues indefinitely by default. Any single co-owner, even one holding only a small minority share, can in principle set the process of ending the indivision in motion by requesting partition, subject to the exceptions described in the article.

A convention d'indivision is one recognized way to depart from this default. Co-owners can agree in advance to keep the property undivided for a period, and to set out rules for managing it during that period, but such an agreement operates as an exception to the general rule that partition can always be requested, not as a permanent waiver of the right to eventually seek partition.

Article 815 itself points toward the route of partition, whether amicable or judicial, and the licitation that follows when a property cannot practically be divided. A further route, added to the Code civil in 2020 and covered in detail below, lets a two-thirds majority of co-owners ask a court to authorize selling the property directly, without going through a full partition. Every one of these routes gives effect to the same underlying principle: indivision is not meant to continue indefinitely against a co-owner's wishes.

What a Two-Thirds Majority Can Decide Under Article 815-3

Article 815-3 of the Code civil allows co-owners holding at least two-thirds of the undivided rights to make certain decisions without needing the agreement of every co-owner. Specifically, that two-thirds majority can carry out acts of administration relating to the co-owned property, give one or more co-owners or a third party a general mandate to administer the property, sell movable, meaning personal, property held in indivision in order to pay the debts and charges of the indivision, and conclude or renew leases other than agricultural, commercial, industrial, or craft-business leases. Co-owners acting under this majority power must inform the other co-owners of what they intend to do; a co-owner who is not part of the majority is not bound to participate, but is not able to block these specific acts either.

Article 815-3 itself does not give the two-thirds majority a power to sell the co-owned real estate, the immovable property, directly. Selling a jointly owned house or apartment is not an act of administration and is not one of the four listed powers. Many summaries of French co-ownership stop here and conclude that selling the immovable therefore always needs unanimity. That conclusion is incomplete: a separate article, described in the next section, gives that same two-thirds majority a different route to reach the immovable, through a court.

The Separate Route That Can Reach the Immovable: Article 815-5-1

Since 1 January 2020, Article 815-5-1 of the Code civil, introduced by ordonnance n. 2019-964 du 18 septembre 2019, gives co-owners holding at least two-thirds of the indivision rights a route the majority power in Article 815-3 does not provide: the ability to ask the tribunal judiciaire to authorize selling an asset held in indivision, including the immovable property, over the objection or silence of a minority co-owner.

The procedure begins outside the courtroom. The majority declares its intention to sell before a notaire, who then notifies the other co-owners. Those co-owners have three months from that notification to respond or to formally oppose the sale. The notaire records the outcome, whether agreement, silence, or opposition, in a proces-verbal, and it is only after that step that the matter can proceed to the tribunal judiciaire.

Reaching the tribunal judiciaire does not guarantee an authorization. The court may authorize the sale only if doing so does not cause excessive harm to the rights of the other co-owners, a standard the Code civil states directly and that the court applies to the specific facts before it. A court can, and does, decline to authorize a sale where the harm to a minority co-owner is judged excessive, so the outcome of any given case cannot be assumed in advance.

Where the court does authorize the sale, it proceeds by licitation, the same court-supervised public sale mechanism used to end an indivision through judicial partition. The proceeds of a sale carried out this way may only be applied to paying the debts and charges of the indivision, not distributed freely, before what remains is divided among the co-owners according to their shares.

Two situations fall outside Article 815-5-1 entirely. It does not apply where ownership of the property has been dismembered, meaning split between a usufruit, the right to use the property or receive its income, and a nue-propriete, the underlying ownership stripped of that right. It also does not apply where a co-owner falls within the protective cases addressed by Article 836 of the Code civil, which cover an indivisaire who is presumed absent or unable to express their will because of distance, or who is subject to a legal protection regime such as tutelle or curatelle. In either situation, the two-thirds majority cannot use this route, regardless of the size of its share.

Article 815-3 and Article 815-5-1: Two Different Powers, Not One

Put the two articles side by side and the honest answer to a common question, whether a two-thirds majority can force the sale of a jointly owned house, is neither a flat yes nor a flat no. Under Article 815-3, the majority cannot decide on its own to sell the immovable; that power genuinely stops at administration, movable property, and most leases. Under Article 815-5-1, that same majority can ask a court to authorize the sale, but the outcome is not automatic. It depends on the notaire-led notice process, the three-month window for the other co-owners to respond, the court's assessment of excessive harm, and whether the situation falls within the dismemberment or Article 836 exclusions.

This is the distinction that determines what actually happens when co-owners disagree about selling shared real estate in France. A bare two-thirds vote, taken among the co-owners themselves, settles administration questions but does not sell the house. A two-thirds majority that goes through the notaire and the tribunal judiciaire under Article 815-5-1 can reach a court-authorized sale of the house, subject to the court's discretion and the exclusions described above. The two articles work together rather than in conflict, but they answer different questions.

When One Co-Owner Can Act Alone: Article 815-5

A separate provision, Article 815-5 of the Code civil, addresses a different situation again: a single co-owner, rather than a two-thirds majority, asking a court for authorization to act alone. Article 815-5 lets a co-owner apply to the court to be authorized to carry out an act that another co-owner's refusal would otherwise block, where that refusal risks harming the common interest of the indivision. The same article specifically prevents a bare owner from using this route to force the sale of the full property against the wishes of someone holding a usufruit over it. Article 815-5 is a tool aimed at breaking a deadlock caused by one uncooperative or unreachable co-owner, distinct from the majority-vote mechanism in Article 815-3 and the majority-plus-court mechanism in Article 815-5-1.

Exiting Indivision: Amicable Partition, Judicial Partition, and Licitation

Because Article 815 guarantees that partition can always be requested, French law provides more than one route to actually bring an indivision to an end. Alongside the court-authorized sale under Article 815-5-1 described above, three further routes are available.

Where every co-owner agrees, the indivision ends through an amicable partition, a partage amiable. The co-owners agree among themselves how the property, or its value, will be divided, and a notaire generally formalizes the agreement, particularly where real estate is involved.

Where the co-owners cannot agree, any one of them can ask a court to order a judicial partition, a partage judiciaire. The court oversees the division of the property among the co-owners according to their respective shares, appointing a notaire or other professional as needed to carry out the practical steps.

Where the property itself cannot reasonably be divided in kind, for example a single house that cannot be split among the co-owners, the court can order a licitation, a court-ordered public sale of the property. The proceeds of that sale are then divided among the co-owners according to their shares, after accounting for any debts of the indivision and any occupation indemnity owed, described below.

These routes exist along a spectrum of how much agreement they require. An amicable partition needs everyone to agree on the outcome. A judicial partition needs no one's agreement beyond a co-owner's decision to bring the request to court, since the court itself then decides the terms. A licitation is often what a judicial partition becomes when the property cannot be divided any other way. Article 815-5-1 sits alongside these routes as a more targeted option, aimed specifically at a majority that wants to sell rather than divide, without requiring a full partition proceeding first. Each route ultimately gives effect to the same underlying principle in Article 815, that no co-owner can be locked into indivision indefinitely against their wishes.

The Occupation Indemnity When a Co-Owner Lives in the Property Alone

It is common, particularly after a death, for one co-owner to live in the co-owned property while the others do not. Article 815-9 of the Code civil addresses this situation directly: a co-owner who uses or enjoys the co-owned property exclusively is, absent an agreement to the contrary among the co-owners, liable for an indemnity.

This occupation indemnity is owed to the indivision itself, as a pool, rather than paid directly, person to person, to each of the other co-owners individually. It compensates the indivision for the value the other co-owners would otherwise have received, whether as rental income or as the ability to use the property themselves, had the property not been occupied exclusively by one co-owner.

In practice, the occupation indemnity typically accrues over the period of exclusive occupation and is settled when the indivision is finally divided, generally by being deducted from the occupying co-owner's eventual share, rather than being paid out separately as it accrues. Co-owners can also agree among themselves to waive or adjust this indemnity, since the Code civil provision applies absent a contrary agreement.

How Charges and Income Are Shared

Alongside the occupation indemnity, the Code civil addresses the ordinary running costs and any income the co-owned property generates. Charges connected with the property, such as maintenance costs, taxes, and insurance, and any income the property produces, such as rent collected from a tenant, are shared among the co-owners in proportion to each co-owner's share in the indivision.

This proportional sharing applies whether the indivision arose from a succession, where shares typically reflect each heir's inheritance rights, or from a joint purchase, where shares typically reflect each co-owner's financial contribution at the time of purchase. A co-owner who advances more than their proportional share of a charge on behalf of the indivision generally has a claim to be reimbursed by the other co-owners, or to have that advance accounted for when the indivision is eventually divided.

Taken together, the occupation indemnity and the proportional sharing of charges and income are what allow an indivision to function fairly over time, even while it lasts longer than any of the co-owners might prefer. None of this changes the underlying rights described earlier in this article: any co-owner can still request partition at any time, and a two-thirds majority can still pursue a court-authorized sale under Article 815-5-1, regardless of how smoothly or otherwise the indivision has been managed up to that point.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about indivision under French property and succession law as of the verification date above. It is not legal, tax, or financial advice, and it does not create an attorney-client or other professional relationship. The rules governing a specific indivision, including any agreement among co-owners, prior gifts, or the value and nature of the property involved, are fact-specific. Anyone dealing with an actual indivision should consult a notaire or qualified lawyer.