Help ! I've put my girlfriend in title and now....

I seem to recall years ago, when Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were boyfriend / girlfriend, that they bought an expensive Malibu house together -- while still single.   Their breakup and subsequent dispute over the ownership of that house probably fed their respective lawyers for a little while.

Bottom line, if you someone goes into title on a piece of a real estate with you, they are a co-owner.  As co-owners, the two (or more) of you will have to agree on any plans to sell, lease, or mortgage that co-owned property.

If the co-owner is your spouse, then you generally have the benefit of family laws and divorce procedures to deal with jointly owned real estate if the two co-owners (called "cotenants" under law) cannot agree on what to do with the property. 

But if the two cotenants are brother-sister, or boyfriend-girlfriend, or a same-sex couple, they may not have the benefit of divorce laws and procedures to split the property (comment:  The author is licensed to practice law only in Texas, and presently Texas courts do not authorize divorce for same sex couples, which may not be the case in other states).   So what happens in those instances ?

The best thing to try and achieve, and which should be a guiding principle in these negotiations, is to avoid a court of law.  A settlement, documented by an attorney and signed by the cotenants, is the goal here.   Co-tenancy litigation is expensive and slow and a terrible way to solve any dispute -- although sometimes there is no other option, especially if there are numerous co-owners (e.g., inheritance by many heirs).

Sometimes its as simple as a deed to move title from one person to the other.  Sometimes its a deed coupled with a document called a "Deed of Trust to Secure Assumption," which secures the conveying co-owner in the event there is a joint mortgage that the "selling" co-owner is still liable on.  Sometimes its an agreement to pay or split equity upon sale or refinance.  Your attorney will be able to offer counsel to guide and document your choices.

For forward thinking cotenants who cannot use a divorce proceeding to deal with these issues, a partnership or LLC agreement might be an excellent planning tool.  These agreements are used in business all the time between partners or members of, respectively, a partnership or limited liability company, to pre-determine what happens if one partner wants to leave the partnership, buy out the other, sell to a third party, gets divorced, gets married, goes bankrupt, or dies.  Although more expensive that just a simple deed putting you into title jointly with another owner, it will, if properly drafted, have all the major details and possibilities mapped out.