There are significant legal distinctions between owning property as tenants by the entirety versus owning property as tenants in common. Understanding these legal distinctions is important when it comes to purchasing residential real estate with friends, business partners, or relatives. A joint tenancy is a form of property ownership where the co-owners own the property equally. If one joint tenant dies, the surviving joint tenant automatically inherits the entire property. By contrast, a tenancy in common is a form of co-ownership of property that does not include a right of survivorship. In a tenancy in common, each co-owner's portion can be passed to beneficiaries named in a will, which may or may not be someone who the surviving co-tenant ever envisioned owning the property with or living with. In New Jersey, two people, other than married couples, are presumed to own property as tenants in common unless they've otherwise...
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