Rule 96.32.Partition of Personal Property.

Rule 96.32 closes out the chapter by extending everything Rule 96 sets up for land to personal property as well. Owners of interests in personal property held in joint tenancy or tenancy in common — again including estates in fee, for life, or for years — may bring an action for partition in kind or for a sale with division of the proceeds, mirroring the structure Rule 96.01 establishes for real property.

Instead of writing out a whole separate set of procedures for dividing jointly owned personal property, the rule directs that the same procedure apply, as near as may be, to that used for partitioning land. This means the petition requirements, parties rules, commissioner process, sale procedures, and distribution rules found throughout the rest of Rule 96 all carry over to personal property cases, adapted as needed to fit property that is not real estate.

The phrase "as near as may be" acknowledges that not every land-specific detail translates perfectly to personal property — there is no county recording requirement for a piece of furniture or a herd of livestock, for instance — but the overall framework of determining interests, dividing or selling, and distributing proceeds according to ownership shares applies just the same. This provision means co-owners of valuable personal property who cannot agree on how to handle it are not left without a remedy merely because the property is not land.