Glossary · UK
What is Joint Tenants?
A way for two or more people to jointly own a property where all owners hold the whole property equally together, and a deceased owner's interest passes automatically to the surviving owner(s), not under their will.
Full Definition
Joint tenants is one of the two main ways multiple people can legally co-own a property in England and Wales, and it is the default arrangement most married couples and civil partners use. Under a joint tenancy, the owners do not each hold a separate, identifiable share of the property -- instead, they all own the whole property together, equally, with no division into percentages. The defining feature of a joint tenancy is the "right of survivorship": when one joint tenant dies, their interest in the property passes automatically to the surviving joint tenant(s), regardless of what their will says, and the property does not need to go through probate to be transferred to the survivor (though probate may still be needed for the rest of the deceased's estate). Because a joint tenant cannot leave their interest in the property to someone else in their will, joint tenancy is generally best suited to couples who are happy for the whole property to pass automatically to the other person on death, such as most married couples and civil partners buying a family home together. A joint tenancy can be converted into a tenancy in common at any time through a legal process called "severance of joint tenancy," which some couples do later in life, for example to allow each person to leave a share of the property to their own children via a will, often in conjunction with setting up a declaration of trust to record the new ownership shares.