Rule 96.18.Court May Order Sale of Land--When.

Rule 96.18 addresses what happens when the commissioners appointed under Rule 96.12 come back and report that a physical division will not work. Instead of leaving the case at a dead end, the rule gives the court authority to order a sale of the property, or of the portion the commissioners identified as indivisible.

This rule complements Rule 96.11, which allows the court to skip commissioners altogether and order a sale directly when the court itself already finds great prejudice would result from division. Rule 96.18 covers the related but distinct scenario where the court initially ordered partition in kind, sent the matter to commissioners, and only then received a report confirming that division is not feasible — either for all the land or for a specific part of it.

Notably, the rule allows for a sale of just a portion of the land if that is what the commissioners' report identifies as the problem area, while other parts of the property might still be capable of division in kind. This flexibility lets the court respond precisely to what the commissioners found, instead of forcing an all-or-nothing outcome for the entire property.