Flouret v Sagland, LLC
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Attorneys and Parties
Brief Summary
Real property partition law, specifically whether land owned entirely by a trust and a limited liability company can qualify as "heirs property" under Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law (RPAPL) 993 [Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act; protects certain family-owned tenancy-in-common property from predatory partition sales and adds special notice, appraisal, and settlement procedures].
The Supreme Court held that the subject property was heirs property under RPAPL 993 and denied the plaintiff's summary judgment motion on that basis, without reaching the motion's merits.
The Appellate Division reversed the order denying summary judgment insofar as it rested on the conclusion that RPAPL 993 applied, and remitted for a new determination on the merits of the motion.
The court held that a trust and a limited liability company are not "individuals" within the meaning of RPAPL 993, and therefore property wholly owned by those entities, with no ownership interest held by a qualifying individual who acquired title from a relative, cannot be heirs property.
Background
The dispute concerns approximately 17.41 acres of undeveloped land in Suffolk County used for residential or agricultural purposes. In 1969, brothers Stephen Perlbinder and Barton Mark Perlbinder acquired the larger parcel as tenants in common from an unrelated grantor. After subdivision, they separately owned two lots with homes and continued to jointly own the subject property. In December 2020, Stephen conveyed his 50% interest to Sagland, LLC, whose manager is Stephen's daughter. In September 2023, Mark conveyed his 50% interest to the Mark Perlbinder 2023 Irrevocable Trust, whose trustee is Muffy Flouret, Mark's daughter. Mark had commenced this partition-and-sale action in January 2022. After the 2023 transfer, the parties stipulated to an amended complaint substituting Flouret, in her representative capacity as trustee, as plaintiff. The defendant asserted that the land was heirs property under RPAPL 993 and that the plaintiff had not complied with the statute's procedures. The plaintiff moved for summary judgment, arguing that because the only co-tenants were a trust and a limited liability company, the property was not heirs property and ordinary partition principles governed.
Lower Court Decision
The Supreme Court, Suffolk County, denied the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment after concluding that the property qualified as heirs property under RPAPL 993 and that the statute's special procedures applied. The court did not decide whether the plaintiff had otherwise established entitlement to partition and sale, including whether a physical partition would cause great prejudice.
Appellate Division Reversal
The Appellate Division reversed. It held, as a matter of first impression in that court, that the text and purpose of RPAPL 993 show that the statute protects human family members, not entities. Because the statute repeatedly uses terms such as "individual," "relative," "ascendant," "descendant," and "collateral," and because trusts and limited liability companies do not fit those definitions, neither owner qualified as an "individual" under the statute. The court rejected the argument that the family relationships of the trustee or the limited liability company manager could substitute for entity ownership. It therefore ruled that the subject property was not heirs property and remitted the matter for the Supreme Court to decide the actual merits of the summary judgment motion under the ordinary partition framework, including whether physical partition would cause great prejudice under RPAPL 901 [general partition statute requiring, among other things, a showing that partition in kind would cause great prejudice to justify a sale].
Legal Significance
This decision establishes in the Appellate Division, Second Department, that property owned entirely by a trust and a limited liability company does not qualify as heirs property under RPAPL 993. The ruling emphasizes a plain-language reading of the statute and its legislative purpose: protecting families and individual heirs from predatory partition tactics, not extending those protections to sophisticated legal entities. It also clarifies that courts should not treat an entity as an "individual" merely because its trustee, manager, or beneficiaries are related to former owners.
For New York partition cases, RPAPL 993 applies only when the statutory heirs-property requirements are met by actual individual co-tenants with qualifying family relationships. If all ownership interests are held by entities such as trusts or limited liability companies, the case will generally proceed under ordinary partition law rather than the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act.