Express declaration required
Under N.D.C.C. § 47-02-06, a joint tenancy interest is one owned by several persons in equal shares by a title created by a single will or transfer, when expressly declared in that will or transfer to be a joint tenancy, or when granted or devised to executors or trustees as joint tenants. Without this express declaration, the interest is presumed to be a tenancy in common instead.
A form of ownership North Dakota never adopted
Here's a genuinely distinctive fact confirmed directly by the North Dakota Supreme Court: North Dakota has never recognized tenancy by the entirety, at any point in its legal history. The explanation traces back to territorial roots — this form of ownership simply never existed in Dakota Territory, from which both North Dakota and South Dakota were formed, a point South Dakota's own Supreme Court has separately confirmed about their shared origin. Married couples in North Dakota looking for automatic survivorship use ordinary joint tenancy instead, the same tool available to any co-owners.
A statute built to preserve joint tenancy
North Dakota has specifically legislated to avoid accidentally terminating joint tenancies in ambiguous transactions. A statute adopted in 1963 provides that a contract for deed selling real property held in joint tenancy does not have the effect of dissolving that joint tenancy relationship among the sellers, as long as the contract for deed is executed by all of the joint tenants together — unless the instrument specifically provides otherwise. This reflects a deliberate legislative choice: rather than treating an ambiguous transaction as automatically severing the joint tenancy the way courts in some other states might, North Dakota built in a rule that preserves it by default.
A fresh 2025 case: ownership beyond the deed
A genuinely recent North Dakota Supreme Court decision, Berger v. Repnow (2025), addressed a situation where only one person's name appeared on a property's deed, even though both people involved had intended to share ownership and had both financially contributed to purchasing and maintaining it. The court confirmed that real property can be partitioned based on equitable factors in this kind of situation. As the court explained, legal ownership on a deed is strong evidence of an intention not to share the property — but it is not the final, dispositive word when the person who isn't the legal owner has genuinely financially contributed to acquiring it. The trial court had erred by awarding the whole property to the one titled owner rather than dividing it based on each party's actual contributions and the broader circumstances.
Why this genuinely matters
This case is a useful reminder that a North Dakota deed's name alone doesn't always settle every ownership dispute that could arise, particularly between unmarried couples or informal co-owners who never formalized their arrangement in the title itself. Anyone who has genuinely contributed money toward property titled only in someone else's name may have a real equitable claim worth exploring, and anyone titling property in only one name despite a shared financial arrangement should understand that courts can look past that titling when the facts support it.
A separate, more modern tool for real estate
None of this changes the fact that North Dakota also offers a completely separate route for keeping jointly or clearly titled real estate out of probate. See our guide to the North Dakota transfer-on-death deed for how that tool works alongside these ownership rules.