Shared ownership

A thing can be in exclusive ownership, which means that the owner of the whole thing is one person. A thing can also be in joint ownership of spouses, where each of the spouses is the owner of the whole thing. Finally, a thing can be in joint ownership, where each of the co-owners of the thing owns a certain share of the thing. In our country, any other type of joint ownership than joint ownership or joint ownership is not considered.

A typical feature of joint ownership is that none of the joint owners owns a precisely defined part of the thing, but has a share in every part of the thing, we also say that each of the co-owners owns an "ideal share" of the thing. This means that it is impossible to determine which specific part of the thing corresponding to his share each of the co-owners owns.

For example, if two people own a house as co-owners, each of them owns half of each part of this house, i.e. half of the windows, bricks, roof, etc. In co-ownership of land, each person owns each part of this land, figuratively speaking, we can say that each person owns half of each lump of earth from this land.

It follows that the co-owners must always agree on the manner of use of the thing and a co-owner cannot arbitrarily appropriate a certain part of the thing with the claim that this actually divided part of the thing corresponds to his share in the thing and that he will use it as such. Such a decision of his would not be valid.

Co-ownership in shares is regulated by the provisions of Sections 137 to 142 of Act No. 40/1964 Coll. of the Civil Code (hereinafter referred to as the "Civil Code"). According to Section 137, Paragraph 1 of the Civil Code, a share expresses the extent to which co-owners participate in the rights and obligations arising from co-ownership of a common thing.

An important rule typical of shared ownership is regulated in Section 139, paragraph 2 of the Civil Code, according to which the management of the common property is decided by the co-owners by a majority calculated according to the size of the shares. In the event of a tie, or if a majority or agreement is not reached, the court shall decide upon the proposal of any co-owner.

The size of the share is therefore very important in shared co-ownership. Having a share of less than ½ of the thing, or the same as the other co-owner, means that I need the consent of the other co-owner to make decisions about managing the thing.

On the contrary, a majority co-owner (owning more than ½ of the property) can, regardless of the consent or disagreement of the other co-owners, decide for himself how to manage the property. This means that, for example, he can decide to lease the property to another person without regard to the other co-owners. Similarly, several co-owners can join forces in this way to achieve a majority. Therefore, the size of the share that each co-owner owns in the common property is particularly important in shared co-ownership.

However, this does not mean that the minority co-owner, who was outvoted, has no rights in this regard. According to Section 139(3) of the Civil Code, if there is a significant change to the common property, the outvoted co-owners may request that the court decide on the change. However, since in this case the court will decide, it is a lengthy solution that few minority co-owners resort to (which is also confirmed by practice, since these are rare proceedings). However, it will certainly be necessary to use it if the change is so serious that it would significantly damage or threaten the rights of the other co-owners (e.g. long-term lease of the property, significant changes to the property). However, the minority co-owner must take into account the length of such legal proceedings in comparison with the change that has occurred or is to occur to the property by the decision of the majority co-owner. If the legal proceedings initiated in this way would exceed the duration of the change in management, e.g. the duration of the lease agreement decided by the majority co-owner, such legal proceedings have no meaning for the minority co-owner.