THE importance of the law of cotenancy is, we think, generally underestimated. That occasions very frequently arise requiring the investigation and application of its principles, is manifest from the fact that in preparing the second edition. of this work, a little more than a decade after the issue of the first, we have found it necessary to increase the number of citations fully one-third. It is true that joint-tenancy and tenancy in coparcenary have been so nearly abolished in the United States, that the rules applicable thereto have only that interest which we accord to ancient history. Tenancy by the entireties, though rarely mentioned, and still more rarely understood, has, perhaps for that reason, generally escaped the blows of iconoclastic legislators. Tenancies in common have increased rather than diminished; and this increase has not resulted wholly from the statutes directing that every cotenancy be presumed to be in common unless a contrary intent is declared in the instrument creating it, but has been largely due to the necessities of commerce, the multiplication of partition fences and party walls, the union of capital and labor in raising or producing crops or other products to be held and owned "on the shares," and to the intermixture and confusion of goods while stored in great grain elevators and warehouses, or in transit from one part of the world to another. Other forms of cotenancy, unknown to the common law, have received legislative sanction in many of the States. Thus, most of the States organized out of territory acquired from France or Spain have retained in some form the law whereby husband and wife have a common interest in the property acquired after their marriage. A tender regard for the families of unfortunate debtors has manifested itself in statutes defining the homeC. & P.-1. COTENANCY AND PARTITION. NOTE TO THE READER The paper in this volume is brittle or the inner margins are extremely narrow. We have bound or rebound the volume utilizing the best means possible. PLEASE HANDLE WITH CARE GENERAL BOOKBINDING Co., CHESTERLAND, OHIO |