§ 853.Notice of Co-Owner's Failure to Contribute Proportionate Share of Taxes For Period of Five Years

Section 853 addresses a specific problem in mining law: co-owners of a mine or mining claim who don't pull their weight on property taxes. If one coowner pays the full tax bill for five straight years while another coowner contributes nothing toward their share, the paying coowner can serve the delinquent coowner with a notice demanding contribution.

That notice is the first step in a chain that runs through the rest of this chapter. Section 854 governs how the notice must be served, § 855 lets the paying coowner escalate to a court petition if the delinquent still refuses to pay, and § 858 lets the court ultimately vest the delinquent's ownership interest in the coowner who carried the tax burden.

The remedy is narrow and specific to co-ownership of mines and mining claims -- it doesn't extend to ordinary tenancy-in-common disputes over other kinds of real property. But for coowners of a mine, it offers a real consequence for freeloading: five years of unpaid taxes can eventually cost the delinquent coowner their entire interest.