When co-heirs don't agree on what to do with the house
Published September 4, 2026
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Hi, my name is Jeremy Barzycki. I'm a real estate professional who focuses on clients who have recently inherited properties or who are going through the probate process. I am not an attorney, so this is not legal advice, but in this video I want to talk a little about what happens when the heirs just aren't agreeing.
Usually in this situation emotions are high, so it's important to separate the emotions from the practical questions. When it comes to the home, there are a few things worth having a truly honest conversation about with all of the heirs.
The first thing to figure out: do you keep the house, sell the house, or does one heir buy out the others? The second question is who's in charge of handling the day-to-day — do they have the legal authority to make those decisions, and do they have the bandwidth to manage all of it?
If you can't get through that, and you're still butting heads and not sure what to do, in the state of Indiana you can file what's called a partition action. Any of the co-owners, or co-heirs, can file it. In Indiana, that requires mediation first — one last attempt to get all the heirs on the same page. If everyone can agree, that still allows the heirs to have a real estate agent list the property, or keep it, or whatever you decide. But if you can't figure it out, the judge will order the home sold, and the proceeds will be dispersed among the heirs.
What typically helps in these situations, before it even gets to mediation or the courts, is having a third party who isn't involved at all just sit in and listen, and make sure the conversation stays honest and fair. That usually helps. Another thing that helps most of the time is having an agent come in and give you an honest value of what the property is currently worth, and what the process would look like for your situation. Sometimes that's enough to get everybody on the same page.
If your situation is a little more complex, or if you don't even know where to start with your family or the other co-heirs, feel free to reach out to me. We can have a conversation and find a path that makes the most sense for you and your family.
Inheriting a home together rarely means everyone involved wants the same thing at the same time. One person may want to sell quickly, another may want to keep the home in the family, and another may just want the whole thing to be over. All of that is normal, and none of it means the situation is broken.
Naming what’s actually being decided
Disagreements about a house are often disagreements about something else wearing the house as a stand-in — grief, fairness, money, or who gets a say. It can help, gently, to separate the practical questions from the emotional ones, even if you can’t fully untangle them.
The practical questions usually come down to a few things:
- Does everyone agree the home should be sold, or does someone want to keep it or buy out the others?
- If it sells, how are proceeds being split, and does everyone understand why?
- Who is actually making decisions day to day — clearing it out, meeting contractors, talking to an agent — and does that person have the authority and the bandwidth to do it?
When co-heirs can’t agree at all
Indiana law gives any co-owner the right to file what’s called a partition action, asking the court to either physically divide the property or — far more commonly with a single house — order it sold and the proceeds split according to each heir’s share. Before it gets that far, Indiana courts require the case to go through mediation first, giving families a real window to reach their own agreement rather than have a judge decide for them. If mediation doesn’t resolve it, the court appoints a licensed appraiser to set a fair value, and the co-heirs can still choose to sell through a real estate agent of their own choosing rather than a public auction, as long as they agree on one.
A partition action is generally a last resort. It adds legal costs and months to the timeline, so it’s worth treating it as the backstop it is, not the starting point, and trying every reasonable path to agreement first.
What tends to help
Putting agreements in writing, even informally, tends to prevent misunderstandings later. So does looping in a neutral third party — an attorney, a mediator, or in some cases the real estate agent handling the sale — rather than letting one sibling carry the whole thing alone.
If part of what’s stalling things is simply not knowing what the home is worth or what selling would actually look like, getting a clear, no-pressure picture of the home’s value is sometimes enough to move the conversation forward.