Breaking up is hard to do

I recently addressed two questions with a similar theme on Yahoo! Answers. The common theme was about what happens when joint owners of real estate have to go their separate ways? It could be a divorce, a move, a death, a business dispute, any number of reasons. The answer is going to depend on highly variable circumstances. There is no single answer, even for what might appear to be similar circumstances, but there are two common guidelines.
Don’t start anything unless you know how you are going to end it. Have an agreement and put it in writing. Now, this does not apply to most marriages, although many people contemplating marriage take the trouble to have a pre-nuptial agreement drawn. Mostly this has to do with business arrangements. What happens if one party wants to sell, and the other wants to stay? What happens if one of the owners dies? Are there buy out rights? How do you value the property for the purpose of a buy out? How do you handle expenses? The list goes on. You cannot decide all the issues in advance, but you can decide on and commit to a process.
The other bit of advice, and this applies to what I already mentioned above, is to obtain competent professional advice. Simple acts can have complex consequences like: incurring a tax liability, clouding a title, or even forcing a sale.