Opinion ID: 2271977
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rental Income

Text: Johnston next argues that the trial court erred in awarding Hundley a share of the rental revenues that Johnston collected, or should have collected, in 2007 and 2008 before the house was sold. [15] We agree. To be sure, the partition statute provides that [i]n a case of partition, when a tenant in common has received the rents and profits of the property to his own use, he may be required to account to his cotenants for their respective shares of the rents and profits. Amounts found to be due on the accounting may be charged against the share of the party owing them in the property, or its proceeds in case of sale. D.C.Code § 16-2901(c) (2001). However, the language of the statute is permissive, not mandatory, and we conclude that it does not dictate what should occur in the situation presented here, i.e., where the tenant in possession has assumed all responsibility for paying the mortgage on the property, relying in part on rents that the parties used to defray their mortgage expenses when they occupied the property together. The trial court found, and the parties acknowledged at oral argument, that Johnston and Hundley rented out portions of the property as landlords in order to have a reduction in the amount of their mortgage. It is undisputed that from March 2007, when Hundley vacated the property, through March 2008, Johnston alone was responsible for each month's mortgage payment, footing the bill for his share as well as Hundley's. [16] We see no reason why Hundley should have been entirely relieve[d] . . . from his contractual obligation to the mortgage company as his counsel advocated, and out from under the mortgage, as the trial court put it, yet receive a portion of the rents that the parties had used to subsidize both of their shares of the mortgage. [17] We conclude that it was error to award Hundley any of the rental proceeds from March 2007 March 2008, when Hundley did not help to satisfy the mortgage obligation. This conclusion obviates the need to consider whether the court erred in imputing rent collections from portions of the property as to which Johnston collected no actual rent during several of the months involved. The trial court's award to Hundley included a share of the rental revenues for January and February 2007. The court found that Hundley paid his share of the house expenses for those months, but that Johnston exclusively received all the rent and incomes from all tenants. However, there was no testimony that Hundley did not receive his share of the rental proceeds prior to his ouster in March 2007, and the record suggests that Hundley's share of the January and February 2007 rents may have been deposited into the parties' joint account [18] (and thus already was accounted for through the court's directive that Johnston pay to Hundley half the amount liquidated from the joint account). On remand, the court should reconsider its findings as to Hundley's entitlement to a share of the January and February rents. As to April 2008, when Johnston no longer took full responsibility for the mortgage payments and Hundley was required by the court to pay his half, we agree that Hundley is entitled to an offset for his share of April 2008 rental revenue. We leave it to the trial court on remand to determine the exact amount of the offset.