Partitions Index, Williamson County, 1845-1963, 17,780 names
When someone owns real estate with another person, or many individuals own it together, they often disagree about how it should be sold, at what price, or whether one person should buy out the others. This most often occurs when someone dies, leaving the real estate to multiple owners. In such a situation, there is a proceeding called a Petition to Partition. This allows at least one of the individual owners to petition the court to divide the property and force a sale. When this process is initiated, a notice is issued by the court and served upon all owners of the property, as well as anyone who may have an interest in it, such as a lien holder or the holder of a mortgage. In most cases, a probate court judge will then appoint an attorney to serve as the commissioner. This commissioner’s duties and responsibilities are to market the property, locate a buyer, usually with the help of a realtor, and sell it. Distribution of the net proceeds is then made to the individuals in the shares to which they own the property.
These situations often occur when a family can’t agree on the terms of the sale itself. In many cases, however, a family is unable to agree or communicate in any fashion that would allow the matter to proceed uncontested, and therefore, the partition proceeding is necessary in order to force the sale on behalf of the uncooperative or disagreeable heirs.
This process is usually time consuming and expensive but the proceedings generate paperwork related to the involved individuals, making for great genealogical information about those involved. The files can be a goldmine for missing family members on the family tree or enhancing family information. There are currently over 17,700 people or businesses listed.
These records took countless hours to index from old documents and provide an invaluable resource for genealogists and historians that would normally never be made available it they hadn’t been preserved. The WCHS is in possession of each of the listed case files and can be copied on request for a fee of $10 plus .50 for each page scan. If a search of the indexes locates a person of interest, a request for copies of the files in paper or digital format can then be made for a fee. Please, notate the corresponding file number, i.e. 1910-PD-062. Contact Us
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