Court Opinion

ID: 9517772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:31:48.505457+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:35.393849
License: Public Domain

CAVANAUGH, Judge,
concurring:
I concur with the majority opinion as I feel compelled to follow the authority of Sheridan v. Lucey, 395 Pa. 306, 149 A.2d 444 (1959). See also, Cobb v. Gilmer, 365 F.2d 931 (D.C.Cir.1966) and Vargos v. Brinton, 305 Pa.Super. 357, 451 A.2d 687 (1982) which held that a partition action taken to judgment is sufficient to sever a joint tenancy with right of survivorship. Nevertheless, the law appears to result in an injustice as one who commences a partition proceeding unequivocally manifests an intent to terminate the relationship of joint tenancy with the right of survivorship. If he dies before the decree in partition is entered, he has not retreated from his intention to terminate the relationship. It is only the event of his death prior to the final decree, and not that the petitioner has changed his mind, that prevents the severance. In a tenancy by the entireties situation, which is in effect a joint tenancy between a husband and wife, if a spouse brings an action in equity against the other spouse who has violated the terms of the entireties agreement by improperly using entireties property, this terminates the relationship. As noted in Stemniski v. Stemniski, 403 Pa. 38, 42, 169 A.2d 51, 53 (1961):
A violation of the rules by one spouse’s appropriating the property to his own use works a revocation of the estate by the fiction of appropriation’s being an offer of an agreement to destroy the estate and an acceptance of that offer when the other spouse starts suit; the property is then fit for accounting and division.
This seems to place the party wishing to terminate an entireties relationship in a far better position than one in *54the ordinary joint tenancy. I see no basis in law or reason that this should be.