Bava Batra - Joint Ownership

Joint Ownership

1. Joint owners of property may dissolve partnership and divide the property, if the parties consent, except in the case of a volume of the Scriptures, which may not be divided under any circumstances. Things which lose their value on division can only be divided if all the owners consent. Except in these cases, either party has a right to insist on a division of the property. In the case where a courtyard ("ḥaẓer") is owned by several partners, each of them has to contribute to the usual requirements of a court; if they divide it, a partition wall or fence must be erected in accordance with certain rules. The previous partners are now neighbors; and their relations are described in chap. ii.

A courtyard less than 8 amos can only be divided if both partners agree to the division. Depending on how the Mishnah is read, this division is either low row of wooden pegs (which shows that visual trespass is not damaging) or a four amos high stone wall (which shows that visual trespass is considered damaging). If both partners agree to the a stone wall, it is built in the middle. The chidush being that if one partner owns more property, he does not need to contribute more space for the stones of the wall.

2. The fundamental rule about neighboring property is, that the owner of the adjoining property must avoid everything that might prove a nuisance to the neighbor, or a source of injury to the neighbor's property. "The noise of a smith's hammer, of a mill, or of children in school, is not to be considered a nuisance" (ii. 3). Disputes as regards injury or nuisance are generally settled by the fact of prior or established rights (Ḥazaḳah).

3. "Ḥazaḳah" (established right, possession de facto) is proved by the undisturbed exercise of such a right during a certain period (three years), in spite of the presence of the rival claimant in the same "land." In this respect Palestine was divided into three "lands" or districts (iii. 2): Judah, Galilee, and Peræa.