Party wall

A party wall (occasionally parti-wall or parting wall, also known as common wall or as a demising wall) is a wall shared by two adjoining properties. Typically, the builder lays the wall along a property line dividing two terraced houses, so that one half of the wall's thickness lies on each side. This type of wall is usually structural. Party walls can also be formed by two abutting walls built at different times. The term can be also used to describe a division between separate units within a multi-unit apartment complex. Very often the wall in this case is non-structural but designed to meet established criteria for sound and/or fire protection, i.e. a firewall. A waterproofing membrane can extend 6" up a demising walls as well as under the wall. While party walls are effectively in common ownership of two or more immediately adjacent owners, there are various possibilities for legal ownership: the wall may belong to both tenants (in common), to one tenant or the other, or partly to one, partly to the other. In cases where the ownership is not shared, both parties have use of the wall, if not ownership. Other party structures can exist, such as floors dividing flats or apartments. Apart from special statutory definitions, the term "Party Wall" may be used in four different legal senses. It may mean: a wall of which the adjoining owners are tenants in common; a wall divided longitudinally into two strips, one belonging to each of the neighbouring owners; a wall which belongs entirely to one of the adjoining owners, but is subject to an easement or right in the other to have it maintained as a dividing wall between the two tenements; a wall divided longitudinally into two moieties, each moiety being subject to a cross easement, in favour of the owner of the other moiety. In English law the party wall does not confirm a boundary at its median point and there are instances where the legal boundary between adjoining lands actually comes at one face or the other of a wall or part of it, and sometimes at some odd measurement within the thickness of the wall.