Property Ownership
The bundle of rights
Ownership of real property is a bundle of rights: possession, use, exclusion, enjoyment, disposition, and control. Real property includes the land, attachments (fixtures), and the appurtenant rights that travel with it - mineral, air, and water rights. Personal property becomes real property by annexation. The fixture tests are method of attachment, adaptability, relationship of the parties, and intention (MARIA). Trade fixtures installed by a commercial tenant generally remain the tenant's and must be removed before the lease ends.
Forms of co-ownership
Tenancy in common: undivided interests, no survivorship, freely inheritable and conveyable. Joint tenancy: equal undivided interests with a right of survivorship, created only by express language. Tenancy by the entirety: available to married couples in West Virginia, carrying survivorship and barring unilateral partition. Condominium owners hold fee title to a unit plus a share of common elements; cooperative owners hold corporate shares plus a proprietary lease. Timeshares may be divided by interval or by fee.
Traps
Questions love the fixture versus trade-fixture distinction, the line between an easement (an interest in land) and a license (revocable permission), and easement appurtenant versus in gross. Watch for a right of survivorship smuggled into a tenancy-in-common question, and for an encroachment described as if it were an easement.
Rule of thumb
Ask two questions: would removal materially damage the structure, and would the item lose its purpose? Yes to both points to a fixture. A built-in dishwasher is a fixture; a tenant's freestanding range generally is not.