Articles
Joint Tenancy or Tenancy in Common? What It Means for Your Home and Your Estate
Author: Philippe Richer
A widow in Transcona came in three weeks after her husband died. She brought a folder with the will, the mortgage papers, and a title search she’d printed off because someone told her to. She wanted to know how long it would take to put the house in her name.
We looked at the title. Her name was already on it, next to his, with two words beside them: joint tenants. The house had become hers the moment he died. No probate, no application, no court. It took one form to update the record.
Two doors down, a different Manitoban had the same conversation and a different answer, because his title said tenants in common. Same house, same street, same marriage length. Different word on the title, and a completely different year ahead.
Those two words are on a piece of paper most people signed years ago without reading. Here’s what they actually do.
The difference, in plain language
When two or more people own property together in Manitoba, the title has to say how they own it. There are two ways.
Joint tenancy comes with something called the right of survivorship. When one owner dies, their share doesn’t go anywhere. It’s absorbed by the surviving owner or owners automatically, by operation of law. The house doesn’t pass through the estate. The will doesn’t touch it. If two people own as joint tenants and one dies, the survivor owns the whole thing, immediately.
Tenancy in common has no right of survivorship. Each owner holds a distinct share. When one owner dies, that share falls into their estate and gets distributed according to their will. Or if there’s no will, according to The Intestate Succession Act. The surviving co-owner keeps their own share and gets a new co-owner: whoever inherits.
That’s the whole distinction. One word on a title, and the house either passes automatically or joins the estate.
Why this matters more than people expect
Most married couples in Manitoba hold their home as joint tenants, and for most married couples that’s what they want. The house goes to the survivor without a court application, without waiting, without legal cost. That’s the design working properly.
The trouble starts when the arrangement on the title stopped matching the life around it, and nobody noticed.
A second marriage where the house is held jointly, and one spouse has children from the first marriage who they intended to inherit their share. The house goes to the surviving spouse. The children get nothing from it, no matter what the will says, because the will never had a chance to speak.
Two siblings who inherited a cottage together and hold it as joint tenants. One dies. Their family expected to inherit their half. The surviving sibling now owns all of it.
Three friends who bought a rental property together in their thirties. Nobody thought about which one they’d chosen. It matters enormously at fifty.
The will does not override the title. This is the part we say most often, and it’s the part that surprises people most. If your home is held in joint tenancy, a clause in your will leaving your half to your daughter does nothing. The right of survivorship happens first and it happens automatically. The will only reaches assets that fall into the estate, and a jointly held house never does.
What this looks like in Manitoba
Manitoba’s land titles system means your ownership arrangement is registered, findable, and specific. It’s on the title. You can look it up. Most people never have.
Joint tenancy also links directly to whether your family will need probate. A house owned solely in one name almost always triggers a probate application at Land Titles before it can be transferred. A house owned in joint tenancy passes to the survivor without one. That’s often the largest single asset in an estate, and whether it’s held jointly is frequently the difference between an estate that needs probate and one that doesn’t.
Manitoba abolished probate fees in 2020, so no bill from the province is riding on this anymore. What’s riding on it is time, paperwork, and whether your spouse spends the months after your death filling out forms.
There’s also a Manitoba wrinkle worth knowing about: homestead rights under The Homesteads Act. If the family home is owned by one partner alone, the other partner generally can’t be cut out of decisions about it. The owner can’t sell it or mortgage it without their written consent, which is why so many Manitoba deals need a homestead consent signed before they close. The non-owning partner also has a life estate, and if the owner dies, the survivor is entitled to keep living in the family home for the rest of their life, even if the will leaves the house to someone else.
Two things about that matter here. Homestead rights for common-law partners attach on the same thresholds as the property rules: three years of cohabitation, one year with a child together, or registration. And only one partner at a time can hold homestead rights in a given home, which is exactly the complication in a second relationship where someone has been married or common-law before.
So sole ownership doesn’t leave a spouse or qualifying partner with nothing. It’s a real protection, and it’s a separate one from joint tenancy. It’s also not a substitute for getting the ownership structure right, because a life estate in a house is not the same thing as owning it.
Our post Living Together in Manitoba: When Does “Mine” Become “Ours”? walks through the thresholds and the homestead rules in detail.
The one people ask about most: adding a child to title
A Manitoba parent, widowed, in her late seventies, decides to add her adult son to the title of her house as a joint tenant. Her reasoning is sound and we hear it constantly: when she dies, the house goes straight to him, no probate, no delay, no fuss.
It will. That part is true. Here’s what else is true.
Her son is now a legal owner of her house. If he’s sued, the house is exposed. If he divorces, his interest may be on the table. If he has creditors, they can look at it. If she wants to sell or refinance, she needs his signature. If they fall out, she’s stuck.
And if she has three children, the house now belongs entirely to one of them on her death, regardless of what her will says about splitting things equally. Her other two children inherit whatever is left, which is usually the smaller half. Families have gone to court over exactly this, and the fights are ugly because everyone in them believed they were carrying out what she wanted.
None of this means it’s a bad idea. For some families it’s a good one. It means it’s a decision with consequences that reach a lot further than avoiding a probate application, and it deserves a conversation before the form gets signed rather than after.
What to check, and what to ask
If you own property with someone else, this is a short list and it’s worth an evening.
- Pull your title. Find out what it actually says. Joint tenants or tenants in common. Don’t assume, and don’t rely on what you remember signing.
- Ask whether it still matches your life. The arrangement that was right when you bought at thirty-two may not be right after a second marriage, a business, or a child with different needs.
- Check whether your will contradicts your title. If your will gives away something the title has already handed to someone else, one of them is going to lose. It’s the will.
- If it’s a second marriage, look harder. This is where the mismatch does the most damage, and where the people affected are least likely to find out until it’s too late to fix.
- Before you add anyone to a title, ask what happens if it goes wrong. Their divorce, their creditors, their disagreement with you. Then decide.
- If you’re buying with someone who isn’t your spouse, choose deliberately. Friends, siblings, a parent helping with a down payment. The default isn’t always the right answer, and it’s much easier to choose now than to change later.
What people believe that isn’t so
“My will decides who gets the house.” Only if the house is in the estate. Joint tenancy takes it out of the estate before the will is read.
“Joint tenancy and being married are the same thing.” They aren’t. Marriage doesn’t put your name on a title, and being on a title together doesn’t make you joint tenants. Both are separate facts you can check.
“Tenants in common means we each own a specific half of the house.” Not physically. You own an undivided share of the whole property, not the west bedroom. The share is a percentage, not a floor plan.
“We can sort this out later.” You can change how a title is held while everyone is alive and agreeing. After someone dies, the right of survivorship has already happened and there is nothing to sort out.
Where to start
Pull your title, or ask us to pull it for you. It takes minutes. Then look at your will beside it and see whether the two documents are telling the same story.
If they aren’t, that’s a conversation worth having this summer rather than leaving to the people who’ll have to work it out without you. Come to one of our webinars on wills and estates, or give us a call and we’ll take a look at what your title says. No pitch, and no obligation to do anything about it.
