Question: I purchased a fifty-percent interest in a boat with a good friend a few years ago. He had access to a slip, and we titled the boat solely in his name so we could use that slip. Our agreement called for us to...
David Weil has been the proud author of the “Ask a Maritime Attorney” column in The Southern California Log Newspaper and Sea Magazine since 2006, with over 300 installments of the column. We have provided links in this section to those articles, covering a wide range of topics of interest to the California maritime and boating communities.
Question: We recently entered into a written agreement with a private party to purchase a boat. The “agreement” was a generic purchase agreement that the seller found online, and we realize now that it was missing a...
Question: I am a boat mechanic, and I am chasing after a boat owner who bounced a check to me for a re-power project. I understand that I now have a maritime lien against his boat, so I have done some...
Question: I am considering buying a 39-foot sailing yacht that was built from a kit on a vacant lot. The boat was never completed or put in the water, and it has been stored on private property since the death of the owner...
Ask a Maritime Attorney: Can we force our partners to accept a fair market value buyout offer on a boat we are in partnership with?
August 28, 2026
Question: My wife and I own a 48-foot motor yacht in partnership with another couple. The partnership has worked well for three years, but we are now interested in buying out our partners and becoming the sole owners of the...