In case a court’s division of a real property jointly owned by two parties has taken into account the actual circumstance of use and meets the interest of both parties, if the division method is not apparently inappropriate, inappropriate citation of evidence or fact-finding should not be used as a ground for appealing to the Supreme Court (Taiwan)

2019.3.13
Frank Sun

The Supreme Court rendered the 107-Tai-Shang-850 Civil Decision of March 13, 2019 (hereinafter, the “Decision”), holding that in case a court’s division of a real property jointly owned by two parties has taken into account the actual circumstance of use and meets the interest of both parties, if the division method is not apparently inappropriate, inappropriate citation of evidence or fact-finding should not be used as a ground for appealing to the Supreme Court.

According to the facts underlying this Decision, the Appellee asserted that the property at issue had been jointly owned by both parties with each owning one fourth of the title.  Although the real property at issue was not subject to any circumstance where it could not be divided due to the usage purposes of things, and the joint owners did not agree not to its division, still a division agreement could not be reached.  Therefore, a complaint was filed to compel the division of the real property at issue in accordance with Paragraph 1 of Article 823 and Article 824 of the Civil Code.  After a decision was rendered by the original trial court, one of the parties appealed out of dissatisfaction with the division method.

According to this Decision, the method of dividing a commonly owned object is subject to the discretion of a trial court.  If the division method set by the court is not obviously inappropriate, inappropriate citation of evidence or fact-finding should not be readily used as a ground for appealing to the Supreme Court.  The original trial court found, by exercising its authority in fact-finding and citation of evidence and by summarizing relevant evidence, that the scheme shown in Option A to divide the real property at issue jointly owned by both parties took into account the actual circumstance of use and met the interests of the parties.  The Appellant also agreed to maintain the joint ownership with each owner holding one third of the real property they received as a result of the division.  Since this finding was appropriate and did not violate any law, the Appellant’s appeal was rejected.