California · Davis-Stirling Act · Chapter 4, Article 1

The pieces that cannot be pulled apart.

A separate interest, a share of the common area and a membership in the association are three things on paper and one thing in law. This article keeps them together — in a sale, in a foreclosure, and against a creditor who would rather deal with them separately.

No partition

§ 4610(a): except as the section itself provides, the common area in a condominium project shall remain undivided, and there shall be no judicial partition of it. Without that rule a single owner could ask a court to carve up the courtyard, and no condominium would be financeable.

The exception in subdivision (b) is for the whole project rather than one share: an owner may maintain a partition action as to the entire project, on the terms the section sets. And the first subdivision is careful to add that nothing in it prohibits partition of a cotenancy in a condominium — two people who own one unit together are not caught by this.

§ 4650 is the companion. Restrictions in the declaration on the severability of the component interests shall not be deemed conditions repugnant to the interest created within the meaning of Civil Code § 711 — the rule against unreasonable restraints on alienation. They survive that objection, but only so far: the restrictions shall not extend beyond the period in which the right to partition is suspended under § 4610.

What travels with the unit

Four sections say the same thing four times, once for each kind of development, because the thing that travels differs in each. In every case, any conveyance, judicial sale, or other voluntary or involuntary transfer of the separate interest carries it along, and a transfer of the owner's entire estate also carries the membership interest in the association.

1. § 4625Community apartment project — the undivided interest in the project.
2. § 4630Condominium project — the undivided interest in the common area. The section repeats that the common area is not subject to partition except under § 4610.
3. § 4635Planned development — the undivided interest in the common area, if any exists. Some planned developments have none.
4. § 4640Stock cooperative — the ownership interest in the corporation, however it is evidenced.

"Involuntary transfer" is the phrase doing quiet work. A foreclosure or a judicial sale moves the share of the common area and the membership whether or not the decree mentions them. A buyer at auction does not acquire a unit without a vote.

§ 4645 allows one exception, and names its conditions: exclusive use areas may be transferred independently of any other interest — but only where the declaration expressly states that they may be, and the transfer follows the declaration's terms. A parking space sold separately needs that authority in the recorded document; see what counts as exclusive use common area.

One owner's builder, another owner's title

§ 4615(a) is the provision a contractor's lawyer discovers late. Labour, services or materials furnished with the consent of, or at the request of, one owner — or that owner's agent or contractor — shall not be the basis for a lien against any other owner's property in the development, unless that other owner expressly consented.

The remodel upstairs cannot encumber the flat below. What follows in the section is the machinery for lifting a lien recorded in breach of it, and the corresponding treatment where the work was in fact authorised for the common area.