Short answer. Yes. No co-owner is obliged to remain in a co-ownership, and any co-owner may demand partition at any time. The exceptions are narrow: an agreement to stay undivided for up to ten years, a donor's or testator's prohibition capped at twenty, and the cases where law itself forbids partition.
What the law says
No co-owner shall be obliged to remain in the co-ownership. Each co-owner may demand at any time the partition of the thing owned in common, insofar as his share is concerned.
Civil Code, Article 494 — Right to Demand Partition. Read the full provision →
The default is exit, not consensus
Heirs who want out of a jointly inherited house are usually told by the relative living in it that everyone has to agree first. Article 494 says close to the opposite. No co-owner shall be obliged to remain in the co-ownership, and each may demand partition at any time. A refusal by the others is not a defence to a partition case; it is the reason partition cases exist at all. What a co-owner demands is partition insofar as his share is concerned, which is worth noting: you are asking for your own share out, not dictating terms for everyone else's.
The limits, and how long each one lasts
Only a few things hold partition off, and each for a fixed stretch. Co-owners may agree to keep the thing undivided, but for a period not exceeding ten years, renewable by a fresh agreement. A donor or testator may prohibit partition, capped at twenty years. Partition is also barred wherever law prohibits it. And a thing that cannot be divided without being ruined presents a separate problem, resolved by ending the co-ownership another way rather than by forcing everyone to stay in it. Notice what is not on that list: the preference of the co-owner currently occupying the property.
The prescription sentence protects you while you wait
The closing line of Article 494 is the one to read if you have waited years. No prescription runs in favour of a co-owner or co-heir against the others so long as that co-owner expressly or impliedly recognises the co-ownership. A brother who has lived in the family house for twenty years while treating it as everybody's does not acquire it by the sheer passage of time. The condition is the recognition. Where a co-heir has openly repudiated the co-ownership, claiming the property as solely theirs and making that known, time begins to matter, which is why the date the claim was first asserted is worth pinning down early.
What to gather before anything else
Find out first whether the estate was ever settled, because partition presupposes a co-ownership with known shares, and until the estate is settled each heir holds an undivided interest in the whole rather than a lot of their own. Collect the title, the death certificate, the list of heirs, any extrajudicial settlement that was signed, and any written agreement among the heirs to keep the property undivided, since that ten-year clock only runs from an agreement that actually exists. Then establish what the occupying co-heir has said about ownership, and when. Those documents and that date shape the whole case.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Vilma Quintos, represented by her Attorney-in-Facts Fidel I. Quintos, Jr., et al. vs. Pelagia I. Nicolas, et al, G.R. No. 210252, June 16, 2014 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Guillerma S. Silva vs. Conchita S. Lo, G.R. No. 206667, June 23, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Heirs of Juanita Padilla, represented by Claudio Padilla vs. Dominador Magdua, G.R. No. 176858, September 15, 2010 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Mercedes Cristobal Cruz, et al. vs. Eufrosina Cristobal, et al, G.R. No. 140422, August 7, 2006 — read the decision on LawPhil →