Co-ownership
is always temporary.
Anyone can demand a partition despite an agreement to the contrary, and the claim is not subject to a limitation period. But nobody can end co-ownership alone.
The Property Act (Закон за собствеността) governs co-ownership in six articles. Three of them define the whole conflict, and the first misunderstanding starts with the counting.
Counted by shares. Not by heads.
Under Art. 32(1) of the Property Act, the common property is used and managed according to the decision of the co-owners who hold more than half of it. Three situations follow from this, and they surprise people.
Three heirs with shares of 1/2, 1/4 and 1/4 are not “two against one”: one of them holds a majority alone. Four people with 1/4 each do not form a majority unless three of them agree. And with two people at 1/2 each, a majority is mathematically impossible, because nobody holds more than half.
Then, under paragraph 2, a district court (районен съд) decides who uses the property, not the owners. Two brothers with equal shares who cannot get along have no internal mechanism to decide anything at all.
The way out is guaranteed, but there is only one. Under Art. 34 of the Property Act, every co-owner may demand a partition despite an agreement to the contrary, and the claim is not subject to a limitation period. Co-ownership is always temporary by law. Nobody can be obliged to remain in it, even if they signed the opposite. And nobody can end it alone.
Cheap, fast,
and with one fatal weakness.
The form is lighter than a notarial deed (нотариален акт): in writing, with notarised signatures (Art. 35 of the Property Act). The agreement is registered. That is the whole reason a voluntary partition costs ten times less.
But a light form does not mean light consequences. Through Art. 34(2) of the Property Act, the rules of the Inheritance Act (Закон за наследството) apply, and they are asymmetric in a way people rarely expect.
A partition without the participation of any one of the co-heirs is entirely null and void (Art. 75(2) of the Inheritance Act). Not partially, not only in the share of the person left out. With no time limit and no gradation.
An unfair share, by contrast, can be challenged only if someone has been harmed by more than one quarter of the value of their share, and only within one year of the partition (Art. 74 of the Inheritance Act). And annulment is not allowed if the share is topped up in money or in kind.
The law forgives a bad calculation far more easily than a missing person.
And the latest development: Interpretative Decision No 4/2023 of the General Assembly of the Civil Chambers of the Supreme Court of Cassation (ОСГК на ВКС), of 18 June 2025, held that the claim under Art. 75(2) of the Inheritance Act is admissible even when the partition has already been admitted by a final judgment but has not yet been carried out. In plain terms: a year and a half of work on a partition case can be undone by a person who appears in the second phase. Who falls within that circle: the inherited property.
Two phases, and each is a separate case
The first phase, admission (допускане), ends with a judgment on which persons take part, for which properties and with what share. The second, implementation (извършване), goes as far as a partition protocol (разделителен протокол) and a drawing of lots. Each ends with a separate judgment that can be appealed, and that is exactly the structural explanation of why partition cases last for years.
On top of that, Art. 343 of the Civil Procedure Code (ГПК) allows challenges to parentage, to adoptions, to wills and to the authenticity of written evidence to be examined in the same proceedings, as well as claims to reduce testamentary dispositions and gifts. A single case over an apartment can contain three separate legal disputes, each with its own witnesses and expert reports.
And the two preclusive deadlines that decide the outcome and never come back. Claims for accounts between the parties are filed at the first hearing after the partition is admitted (Art. 346 of the Civil Procedure Code). The request for an indivisible home to be allotted to one party against an equalisation payment is made no later than the first hearing after the judgment under Art. 344(1) becomes final (Art. 349(4) of the Civil Procedure Code).
A missed moment is not made up for with better evidence later. A person who put €30,000 into renovation and did not claim accounts in time enters the second phase with the same share as someone who put in nothing.
Since 2025 there has also been a new obligation: under Art. 140a of the Civil Procedure Code, the court obliges the parties to attend an information session on mediation in person, including in partition cases, but only in the implementation proceedings, that is, in the second phase. The obligation is to attend, not to agree; failing to attend without good reason comes at a cost.
The discount is not negotiated.
It is written in the code.
If the property is indivisible and cannot be allotted to one party, the court puts it up for a public sale (публична продан) under Art. 348 of the Civil Procedure Code. From then on, the arithmetic of enforcement proceedings applies.
The starting price from which bidding begins at the first sale is 80 per cent of the valuation (Art. 485(4) of the Civil Procedure Code), and it cannot be below the tax assessment (данъчна оценка) where one has been determined. If the sale does not take place, the new one starts from 90 per cent of the starting price of the first (Art. 494(2) of the Civil Procedure Code), that is, 72 per cent of the valuation.
For a three-room apartment whose value the three heirs had estimated at €166,900, this means a starting price of €133,520, and at a new sale €120,168. The difference from the value they started from is €46,732, that is, €15,577 per person. That is a loss from the starting price alone, before the fees and the years of dispute.
Two clarifications without which the numbers mislead. First, these are starting prices: bidding begins there, and there are no published statistics with a methodology on the final price. Second, the percentages are calculated on a court expert’s valuation, while €166,900 is the median asking price for the Mladost neighbourhood (alo.bg, 168 listings) and is here only for scale. How five different numbers come about for one property: the real price.
The mitigating circumstance is that the parties to the partition can bid and buy the property (Art. 348 and Art. 354 of the Civil Procedure Code). The problem is that a co-owner with the money to buy at a public sale usually had the money to buy before the partition too, at the full price.
The years before the letter are not paid
Under Art. 31(2) of the Property Act, when the common property is used personally by only some of the co-owners, they owe the others compensation for the benefit they are deprived of, from the day of the written demand.
The obligation arises when the letter is received, not when the use begins. The years before it are not paid, and not because they have expired under a limitation period, but because no obligation for them ever arose. This is the most expensive silence in the whole topic: eight years at a €150 monthly share make €14,400 that never existed as a claim.
Under Interpretative Decision No 7/2012 of the General Assembly of the Civil Chambers, personal use is any conduct of a co-owner that prevents or restricts the others from using the property according to their rights, without collecting yields and civil fruits. Three forms follow from the reasoning: the user makes use of the whole property; does not use it but keeps the key and does not let the others in; or has let a third party use it free of charge.
And the second trap. If the user rents the property out for money, Art. 31(2) of the Property Act does not apply at all. Letting it for payment is an act of management, and the claim falls under Art. 30(3) of the Property Act, with different evidence. Which article applies depends on a fact the other co-owners often have not checked, because they did not know it mattered.
The right of redemption
can be bypassed legally.
Instead of a partition, a co-owner can sell their share. Under Art. 33 of the Property Act, they can sell it to a third party only after presenting written evidence to the notary that they offered the others the chance to buy on the same terms. If this is breached, a right of redemption arises, and the claim is filed within a two-month period from the sale.
Three things cannot be read from the text. First, the breach does not make the deal null and void: the sale is valid, and a potestative right (преобразуващо право) arises. Second, Art. 33 applies only to a sale, not to a gift, an exchange or a transfer in return for maintenance and care.
Third, and the most inconvenient. Under Interpretative Decision No 5/2012 of the General Assembly of the Civil Chambers, the combination of a gift plus a sale is not a circumvention of the law: the co-owner gifts a tiny share to the buyer, the buyer is now a co-owner, and the rest is sold to a co-owner, not to a third party. No right of redemption arises.
It can be broken only if the others prove that the gift is void or conceals a sale, which means proving intent, not a document. And the flip side is just as important: a buyer of an undivided share (идеална част) does not buy a property but a position in someone else’s dispute, and gets out of it through partition, not with a notarial deed. What is checked before such a purchase: checking the property.
Twenty times, and there is one reason
The state fee in a partition case is 4 per cent of the value of the shares, and with a settlement before the partition protocol is drawn up it drops to 2 per cent. Notarisation of a voluntary partition is a fee, not a percentage of the property. That is the whole difference.
For a €166,900 three-room apartment and three co-owners with 1/3 each, the orders of magnitude are as follows. Voluntary partition: a notary fee of around €363 including VAT plus registration, that is, under €500 in total. Court partition with a settlement before the protocol: about €4,000 to €5,000. Court partition to the end: €8,500 to €10,000, of which €6,676 is the state fee alone.
One clarification about lawyers’ fees, which changed recently. Since the State Gazette (ДВ), issue 14 of 18 February 2025, Ordinance No 1 (Наредба № 1) no longer sets mandatory minimums, and the amount is agreed freely. The practical consequence is the opposite of what people expect: the disappearance of the tariff minimum does not mean cheaper, it means no benchmark.
And the trap that looks like a saving. If in a voluntary partition one person receives the whole apartment and pays the others off in money, they acquire more than their share and owe local tax (местен данък) on the excess. For Varna the rate is 3%, so for a €166,900 three-room apartment and three co-owners the tax is about €3,338. Nobody expects it, because “we are only splitting up”. And one more thing: national calculators publish 2.5% for Varna, while the rate in force under the municipal council’s ordinance is 3%.
The standard covers one round of proceedings.
There are two phases.
There are no official statistics by type of case, but there are two independent reference points. The courts themselves classify partitions as complex civil cases with a total examination period of up to one year without complications and up to two years with complications. Published observations by law firms give 12 to 24 months in most cases and over three years when there are appeals.
The arithmetic the sources do not do is this: the standard covers one round of proceedings, but a partition has two phases, each with its own appeal and cassation instance. The time limits do not add up linearly; they multiply by the number of instances someone decides to go through.
Three years is not the extreme case. The extreme case is a case that outlives one of the parties and continues with their heirs, so the circle of signatures widens halfway through. And with spouses the circle is even wider than the deed shows: marital community property.
Frequently asked questions
How is the majority counted between co-owners?
By shares, not by heads. Under Art. 32(1) of the Property Act, the common property is used and managed according to the decision of the co-owners who hold more than half of the common property. Four people with one quarter each do not form a majority unless three of them agree, and with two people at one half each a majority is mathematically impossible, because nobody holds more than half. In that case, under paragraph 2, the matter is decided by the district court.
Can a co-owner be obliged to remain in co-ownership?
No. Under Art. 34 of the Property Act, every co-owner may demand a partition of the common property despite an agreement to the contrary, and the claim for partition is not subject to a limitation period. So co-ownership is always temporary by law. The reverse is also true: nobody can end it alone, only with the consent of everyone or through the courts.
From when is compensation owed if one co-owner lives in the property?
From the day of the written demand, under Art. 31(2) of the Property Act. The obligation arises when the letter is received, not when the use begins, so nothing is owed for the years before that, and this is not a question of limitation. If, however, the user rents the property out for money, Art. 31(2) does not apply: that is an act of management, and the claim falls under Art. 30(3) of the same act.
What price does the public sale of an indivisible property start from?
The starting price at the first public sale is 80 per cent of the court expert’s valuation, under Art. 485(4) of the Civil Procedure Code, and it cannot be lower than the tax assessment where one has been determined. If the sale does not take place, the new one is held at a starting price equal to 90 per cent of the starting price of the first, that is, 72 per cent of the valuation. These are the starting prices from which bidding begins, not the prices at which the property is sold.
One letter and one date
If someone uses the common property alone, the clock starts from the written demand, not from the conversation at the kitchen table. Every month of silence is a month that is paid to nobody, and it is the only thing in this topic that can be fixed in a single day.
Send us the shares and who lives in the property. We tell you whether there is a majority under Art. 32 of the Property Act at all, who owes what from which date, and at what point a court partition becomes more expensive than the concession someone does not want to make.
This material is not legal advice. The specific case should be checked by a lawyer.
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