Selling your boat share: leaving the co-owner group

This article is for co-owners who want to leave a co-owner group, and for buyers who want to know beforehand how that works. Do you want to sell a share in your own boat? Then the guide for owners is the right place to start.

Reading time: about 12 minutes

When you are just getting in, you do not think about getting out. That is understandable, but now is exactly the right time for it: anyone who wants to leave in an orderly way later needs an arrangement that is in place before buying. Without it the law applies, and for a shared boat the law knows only one answer: sale.

This article explains how leaving a co-owner group works, what the PartABoat template of the Living Contract (co-owner agreement) provides for it, and where the limits lie that no contract can move. The Living Contract is a template. What is written here describes the template, not your individual case.

This guide was written for owners and buyers in Germany. Legal, tax and boat-paper points refer to German law and practice; other countries may differ.

1. Why leaving is settled before joining

Anyone who buys a boat share joins the others as fractional co-owners (Bruchteilsgemeinschaft). The German Civil Code (BGB) gives every co-owner a right many underestimate: they can demand at any time that the co-ownership be ended (§ 749 paragraph 1 BGB). A piece of land could be divided. With a boat that is not possible, division in kind is ruled out (§ 752 BGB), and so ending it here always means the same thing: the boat is sold and the proceeds are divided. If you cannot agree, the sale follows the rules on the sale of pledged property (§ 753 BGB), in other words an auction.

That is why a leaving arrangement is not cosmetic. Without it a single co-owner has the power to take the boat away from all the others, and nobody could reproach them for it. They are only using their statutory right.

An agreement can bring order here, in two directions at once. It can exclude the right to end the co-ownership for an initial period, so that the group lasts. And it must leave anyone who wants out a route that does not go through selling the whole boat. The two belong together: an exclusion without an orderly exit would mean someone is stuck.

2. The orderly route: notify, consent, buy

The PartABoat template provides for three steps when a share is sold.

1. First, the notice. Anyone who wants to give up all or part of their share tells the other co-owners in text form. This is not a formality but the starting point for the deadlines: from its receipt the time runs for the others’ right to buy. If the notice names your buyer and the terms of your contract with them and points out that their consent counts as given if they do not refuse in time, the time for their consent runs from the same day.

2. Second, consent. You undertake to transfer your share only to a buyer the other co-owners have consented to. That sounds like a way of blocking, but it is limited: consent may be refused only for good cause relating to the person of the acquirer, for example if facts suggest they will not keep to the rules on use and costs. Each of the other co-owners decides within 30 calendar days of your notice; anyone who refuses gives brief reasons in text form, and anyone who does not refuse in that way within this period has consented.

   Characteristics under § 1 of the German General Equal Treatment Act, such as origin, gender, religion, disability, age or sexual identity, must play no part in this. So nobody can block the sale on a whim: if there is no good cause, you are entitled to consent, and your buyer’s differing wishes on use are not in themselves such a cause.

3. Third, the right to buy. The other co-owners can take over the share themselves, individually or jointly, in proportion to their own shares, within 30 calendar days of receipt of the notice. The price is not plucked from the air: if your notice names a buyer and their price, they take it over at that price and on the other terms of your contract with them. If you then conclude the sale at a lower price or on otherwise more favourable terms, that counts as a new notice, and the period starts again. If the notice names no buyer, the yardstick in chapter 3 applies.

The difference from a right of pre-emption matters for boat owners, even if it sounds technical. A right of pre-emption that works against every acquirer and not only against the contracting party exists only for land. With a boat, such an arrangement works only between those involved. That is why the template combines three things: a right to buy, the consent of the co-owners and the seller’s duty to transfer the share only if the acquirer joins the agreement. That too works only between those involved, but it promises no more than it delivers. A mere right of pre-emption, by contrast, suggests more security than it provides.

3. What the share is worth when there is no offer

The most common point of dispute when leaving is not whether but how much. If your notice names a buyer and their price, it is simple: that price also applies to the co-owners. If it names none, because no buyer has been found yet, or if someone demands dissolution of the co-ownership, another yardstick is needed: the portion of the market value of the whole boat attributable to the share, plus any additional proceeds that selling the whole boat would bring, as far as they can be established.

If you cannot agree on this value, it is established by an expert acting as expert determiner (§ 317 BGB), appointed on application by one side by the competent Chamber of Industry and Commerce; their finding is binding on everyone. If the others commission the expert within 14 calendar days of the notice, their period is suspended until the report is available, at the latest until the 60th calendar day after the notice. That takes away the basis for a dispute: neither the person leaving nor those staying set the price, but a third party appointed by a neutral body.

4. If no co-owner takes it over

If nobody in the group takes it up, the share goes to a third party. Then what the template provides for every new co-owner applies: the other owners can reject them only for good cause relating to that person, and they join the co-owner agreement. Without joining, the transfer is not permitted under the template, because only then do all the rules of the agreement apply to the new co-owner.

You have two routes for marketing it. You can sell the share yourself, privately or through a portal, or you can instruct PartABoat to broker the resale. This instruction is a separate contract and not an ancillary duty under the Living Contract. So you are not obliged to sell through PartABoat.

If you do, we agree the commission in this instruction before you commit yourself. If you create a listing by 28 February 2027, you pay no commission for that listing, provided the purchase contract is concluded by 31 December 2027 (terms of the offer). For the buyer of your share the structuring fee remains unchanged at 1.5% of the value of the share, at least €500 and at most €1,500, due only if completion takes place.

Commission and structuring fee are final prices. Any statutory VAT and other price components are contained in them.

PartABoat is just starting: listing and enquiries already work. Until PartABoat accompanies the purchase, you buy directly; getting to know each other and forming the group are then yours to organise. How to protect the purchase price is explained in the information sheet.

5. What the co-owner group has in its own hands

When you read rules like these, the worry soon comes up: one person leaves and we lose the boat. It does not have to go that way, and the reason is already in chapter 2. The right to buy is not just an option for a single co-owner who happens to have money to spare. You can also take over the share together, in proportion to your existing shares or as you agree among yourselves.

That turns the situation round. The share then belongs to you, and the time pressure is gone. You can leave it until a buyer comes along who fits, and offer it at leisure through PartABoat’s resale brokerage. And because you are then the sellers yourselves, you can choose the next co-owner in a much more relaxed way. If it takes longer, you simply have a season with more time on your boat.

This is the real difference between a structured co-owner group and a handshake arrangement. In a handshake arrangement one person leaving is a crisis. Here there are two ways out: a new buyer from outside or a takeover by those staying.

Two things go with this. The takeover costs money: you have to pay for the share. And it shifts the balance: anyone holding a larger share has more weeks of use on paper and also bears a larger part of the running costs. That is not a drawback, just a decision you should make consciously and not under time pressure.

If there are two of you and your co-owner leaves, the same two ways out exist, a buyer from outside or your takeover; only consent and the right to buy then lie with you alone. If you take over their share, the whole boat belongs to you, with all the running costs, until you bring co-owners on board again through your own listing.

For the most unpleasant case the template does not provide this lever: if a co-owner’s share is seized or becomes part of an insolvency, what is in chapter 6 applies.

6. The limits no contract can move

This is where it gets uncomfortable, which is why it is in this article and not in the small print.

The exclusion of the right to end the co-ownership applies only for a limited time. An agreement can exclude the right under § 749 BGB for an initial period of three years and after that tie it to six months’ notice expiring on 31 October, that is, at the end of the season. An exclusion for ever would be the wrong route: it brings no more than staggering it over time and tends to weaken the clause rather than strengthen it.

Good cause always remains. Anyone who can rely on good cause, for example a lasting breakdown of the relationship or serious breaches of duty by the others, can demand that the co-ownership be ended during the initial period too. This cannot be agreed away, and a contract that tries risks its validity at this point.

Seizure and insolvency stand outside the agreement. If a co-owner’s share is seized or becomes part of an insolvency, the creditor or the insolvency administrator can demand that the co-ownership be ended, regardless of what the co-owners have agreed among themselves. A contract can bring little order here; the template only requires a co-owner to notify the others if they use their share as security for financing, so that they know early. This residual risk belongs in any honest explanation and cannot be removed by a clause.

That is the price of real ownership being real ownership.

7. What should be in the contract

If you buy a share, it pays to look at the agreement before you sign. Five points decide whether leaving will go in an orderly way later:

• Is the right to end the co-ownership excluded for a limited time, and how long is the initial period?
• How long do the co-owners have to exercise their right to buy, and from when does the period run?
• How is the price set if there is no third-party offer?
• On what grounds may consent to an acquirer be refused, and must the refusal be reasoned?
• What happens if a share is seized or becomes part of an insolvency?

The checklist for buying a boat asks, in the block on buying a share, about the rules for leaving; these five questions make that specific.

8. Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

Leaving is the part of co-ownership that gets talked about least and says the most about the quality of an agreement. The law puts a sharp tool in every co-owner’s hand. A good agreement does not take it away but sets the order: first the orderly sale of the share and, only if that does not work, ending the co-ownership.

What does not work is in this article just as much as what does. A contract that promised away seizure and insolvency would not be a better contract, but a dishonest one.

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About the author: Ekki is the founder of PartABoat and a co-owner of two motorboats, one in Croatia, the other on the Rhine.

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