Parents on Title: A Co-Ownership Plan for a Belleville Bungalow

The situation

Soo-jin and Eun-ji had spent thirty years in the same house, both working as professional engineers until their retirement two years earlier. Their four-bedroom home had become more space than they needed, and more upkeep than they wanted, so they decided to sell it and move to Belleville, where their daughter's family had already put down roots. The plan that emerged over several dinner conversations was not a simple downsize. Their daughter, Craig's partner, and Craig himself wanted to buy a larger bungalow together with Soo-jin and Eun-ji, with all four adults living under one roof or, in the more likely version, the parents in a self-contained addition on the same lot.

The numbers made the arrangement attractive to everyone. The property they found, listed at roughly $1,150,000, was more than Craig and his partner could afford on their own, but well within reach once Soo-jin and Eun-ji's equity from their previous sale was added in. Soo-jin and Eun-ji were prepared to contribute roughly $700,000 toward the purchase, largely from the proceeds of their old home, while Craig's household would carry a mortgage of about $450,000 in their own names. On paper it looked like a natural fit: one family, one roof, and a purchase price nobody could reach alone.

What the family had not worked out, and what they came to Treadstone Law to sort out before making an offer, was how the ownership itself should be structured. Putting all names on title in equal shares would not reflect the actual money going in, and would leave both households exposed if the relationship soured, if one couple wanted to sell before the other, or if something happened to Soo-jin or Eun-ji later in life.

The legal problem

Ontario recognizes two ways for multiple people to hold title to a single property. The first is joint tenancy, where all owners hold an equal, undivided interest and the property passes automatically to the surviving owners on death, bypassing a will entirely through what is called the right of survivorship. The second is tenancy in common, where each owner holds a distinct, often unequal share that can be sold, mortgaged, or left to heirs independently. Neither option, used alone, matched what this family actually needed.

The core mismatch was money. Soo-jin and Eun-ji were putting in roughly 61 percent of the purchase price from their own savings and the sale of their previous home. If all four owners went on title as equal joint tenants, that contribution would legally dissolve into a quarter-share each, with no record of who had actually paid for what. If Soo-jin or Eun-ji later needed to move into long-term care, or if the couple wanted to leave their share to their daughter rather than see it split automatically among all owners on death, joint tenancy's right of survivorship would work against that intention rather than for it.

There was a second, quieter problem. Registering title in a way that did not match the actual financial contributions can create what is called a resulting trust by operation of law — a legal presumption, developed by the courts over many years, that someone who pays for property but is not named on title (or is named for less than they paid) may still hold a beneficial interest in it, separate from what the deed says. Left unaddressed, this kind of mismatch is exactly the sort of thing that surfaces years later in a family dispute or an estate, when memories of who paid for what have faded and nobody can point to a document that settles it. The family did not want a legal presumption doing the work that a clear written agreement should be doing from the start.

What we did

1. Mapped the actual contributions before drafting anything. We asked the family to set out, in writing, exactly how much each household was contributing to the purchase price and closing costs, and where those funds were coming from. Soo-jin and Eun-ji's roughly $700,000 came from their prior home sale and savings; Craig's household's roughly $450,000 came from their own savings and a mortgage they would carry jointly. This became the foundation for everything that followed.
2. Recommended tenancy in common with unequal shares, not joint tenancy. Rather than four equal quarter-shares, we structured ownership as tenancy in common in proportions reflecting the actual money in: roughly 61 percent to Soo-jin and Eun-ji jointly, and roughly 39 percent to Craig and his partner jointly. This meant each pair could later deal with, mortgage, or leave their share independently of the other.
3. Prepared a trust declaration to record the unequal contribution formally. Rather than leaving the reasoning behind those percentages to memory, we drafted a declaration of trust, signed by all four owners before closing, that sets out in writing exactly what each household contributed and confirms that the registered shares reflect those contributions. This is the document that answers the question a resulting trust dispute would otherwise have to guess at.
4. Drafted a co-ownership agreement covering the situations a deed alone never addresses. The agreement set out who is responsible for the mortgage payments Craig's household carries, how ongoing costs like property tax, insurance, and repairs are split between the two households, what happens if one household wants to sell its share while the other wants to stay, and a right of first refusal giving the remaining owners the opportunity to buy out a departing household before any share could be sold to an outsider.
5. Built in a plan for long-term care. Because Soo-jin and Eun-ji were already thinking ahead to a stage of life where one of them might need long-term care, the agreement addressed what happens to their share if that occurs — including how their share could be sold or mortgaged to help fund care costs without forcing a sale of the entire property or displacing Craig's household.
6. Coordinated the trust declaration and agreement with each household's own wills. A trust declaration fixes what each household owns; it does not decide what happens to that share on death. We recommended, and the family separately arranged, that each set of owners update their wills to specifically address their share of the Belleville property, so the tenancy-in-common structure and their estate plans lined up rather than working at cross purposes.

The outcome

The purchase closed on schedule, with all four owners registered on title as tenants in common in shares matching what they had actually contributed: roughly 61 percent to Soo-jin and Eun-ji, roughly 39 percent to Craig and his partner. The trust declaration and co-ownership agreement were signed and held alongside the closing documents, so the family has a clear written record of both the money and the arrangement, rather than a shared understanding that exists only in conversation.

The value of the structure showed itself within the first year, in a small and entirely ordinary way. The addition Soo-jin and Eun-ji occupied needed a roughly $18,000 roof repair that fell outside what either household had budgeted for. Because the co-ownership agreement already set out how shared capital costs were split — in this case, proportionally to ownership share, so roughly $11,000 from Soo-jin and Eun-ji and roughly $7,000 from Craig's household — the family resolved it as a housekeeping matter rather than a negotiation. Nobody had to work out from scratch who should pay what, because that question had already been answered before it ever came up.

The arrangement gives each household room to change its mind later without dragging the other along. If Craig's family were ever to separate or want to move, their roughly 39 percent share could be sold, mortgaged, or bought out by Soo-jin and Eun-ji under the right of first refusal, without unwinding the whole property. If Soo-jin or Eun-ji eventually need long-term care, their share is already positioned to be dealt with on its own terms. None of that required anything dramatic to happen for the family to benefit — the structure simply removed a set of open questions before they had the chance to become disputes.

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