Can a joint tenancy in real property be terminated?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Wong v. Chong Estate, 2016 BCSC 953 (CanLII):

Where a joint tenancy in land is concerned … either of the joint tenants is at liberty to sever the joint tenancy at any time – a fact that clearly undermines the notion that as a matter of law, a joint tenant receives a "full and perfect" inter vivos gift of the "survivorship"…. Severance, which occurs automatically upon the destruction of the four unities, ends the jus accrescendi, with the result that each co-owner becomes entitled to a distinct share in the land rather than an undivided interest in the whole…. As observed by Steel J.A. in Simcoff v. Simcoff, 2009 MBCA 80, a case involving land, "the fact that a 'complete gift' ... included a right of survivorship does not, prima facie, prevent a donor from dealing with the retained interest while alive. The right of survivorship is only to what is left." In the case of real property (and personalty, for that matter) nothing remains of the right of survivorship.

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