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With harvest inbound, your operation may be considering bringing on a person to help run the grain cart, help unload

The Ag sector is looking at the lowest net farm income in 2016 since 2002, with a drop of 56%

If you inherit property with your brothers and sisters, you just got thrown in to business together with no business plan, no body in charge and perhaps, wildly different goals for the business. This form of ownership is called:

• Tenancy in Common – , in which the two or more parties own an undivided fractional interest in the property, but when one of the “tenants in common” dies, that person’s fractional interest passes via probate (with or without a will) to the dead tenant’s heirs. This allows for a “step up” in the tax basis of the property for capital gains purposes, and can be used to bring in the next generation as a co-owner with the surviving spouse.

That’s why it gets complicated. Corn or beans. Hay ? CRP? Sunflowers? Multiple owners have multiple biases, goals and desires. If a co owner is deep in debt, they are motivated to maximize revenue while a well off co owner might consider things like land conservation, long term development potential or other agenda items that will bring conflict to the front burner.

Iowa law says people in these situations have the right to get paid from a cotenant who is in control of the property, their respective shares of the “rental value” of the property. Easy to figure when one co tenant got a rent check, not so easy when that co tenant is farming the ground.

The Iowa Supreme Court has pointed out that lease of executed by one tenant in common Is not binding on other tenants in common unless they okay it, like cashing a rent check.