Q: My boyfriend and I broke up after we bought a home jointly. I make payments, and want to sell. What do I do?

A: When unmarried people buy a home, they are best advised to consult lawyers to write an agreement to address this type of situation. It sounds like you did not do that. At this point, you need a lawyer to help you with this.

You said that you bought the home "jointly." Joint ownership is often confused with tenancy in common. In joint ownership, the title is truly owned together and, if one person dies, the other person automatically owns the whole property by right of survivorship. In a tenancy in common, each person owns half and can theoretically sell his or her half. In the event of death of one owner, the decedent's share passes through his or her estate and does not automatically pass to the survivor.

The first thing here is to verify what you have. If you have a true joint tenancy, if the boyfriend won't agree to sell, you would have to file what is called a "partition" action, which splits the property into tenancy in common. You might then have to sue the boyfriend to get a judgment and then foreclose on his half in order to then be able to sell the property. If the property is already owned as tenants in common, you can skip the partition step and simply sue him.

All of the foregoing has skipped the preliminary question of whether or not you even have the right to force a sale of the house in the absence of an agreement. If he is living in the house and not paying, but simply does not want to sell, you could be limited to recovering his monetary obligations but be prevented from selling.

In short, this is a very complicated problem and, on top of that, there are facts missing. You need a lawyer to sort this out and properly advise you.