What should co-owners of an apartment do if they cannot live in it together? The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has answered this question

You can often meet a situation when the owners of their own apartment cannot live together. The reasons may be different: personal disputes or simply the area of the apartment may be too small.

Can the second owner, who predominantly lives in the apartment, not allow the second owner to live in it? The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation believes that it can, but only in such a case, the owner living in the apartment must pay compensation to the other owner.

What was the dispute considered by the Supreme Court?

A citizen received a quarter of a one-room apartment as a gift, but he had not moved into the apartment for many years, and when he decided to start living in it, the owner of three quarters of the apartment did not let him in. On top of that, there were personal disputes between the owners.

Then the owner of a quarter of the share filed a lawsuit to move into the apartment, but the first and appellate instances refused him for the reason that the apartment is one-room and it is impossible to allocate a "corner" for the owner to live in.

Then the citizen appealed to the Supreme Court, which supported the lower courts in the opinion that it was impossible to move into the apartment, but did not agree that the courts left the owner of a quarter share with nothing.

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation also noted that the apartment was not intended for joint residence of the plaintiff and the defendant, as it was a one-room apartment, and the parties had not reached an agreement on the order of use of the apartment. In the disputed residential premises there is no room proportional to the plaintiff's share in the ownership right to the apartment. The parties cannot live in one room because of personal disputes.

Under the above circumstances, it was indeed impossible to move into the apartment. But if the owner cannot be provided with the use of his share (for example, due to the size, layout of the residential premises, as well as the possible violation of the rights of other citizens to this residential premises), the right of the owner can be realized by other means, in particular by demanding appropriate compensation from the other co-owners.

Thus, by refusing the plaintiff to move into the residential premises, the court must unambiguously determine the order of use of the owners of the residential premises, establishing as compensation to the "evicted" owner of the monthly payment, which should be made by the other co-owners for the actual use of the share.

Why such an order? The right of ownership consists of three powers: possession, use and disposal. So, the Supreme Court considers that the right of use implies the extraction by the owner of useful properties of the thing, which can be achieved also by receiving payment for the use of the thing by other persons.