Rule 96.08.Interests of Parties to be Determined.

Rule 96.08 marks the pivot point of a partition case: after the parties have been identified and their claims presented, the court must decide two things. First, what share does each party own? Second, given those shares, should the land be divided in kind or sold?

Determining interests is not a formality. Partition cases often involve unequal shares, disputed claims, or interests that arose through inheritance, purchase, or gift at different times. The court has to sort through the evidence and fix each party’s percentage or fractional interest before it can meaningfully order anything else, since every later step — physical division, allotment of shares, or distribution of sale proceeds — depends on getting these shares right.

Once interests are settled, the rule directs the court to choose between the two paths Rule 96.01 sets up: partition in kind, physically splitting the property among the owners according to their shares, or a sale followed by division of the proceeds. This decision typically rests on whether the land can be divided without causing real harm to the owners' interests, a question the rest of the chapter develops further through the commissioners' process and the sale procedures for land that cannot be split.