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the interest on partition (which, if she received a payment in
kind, would not be subject to the Barge management philosophy).
Accordingly, in order to determine the price that the purchaser
would pay, we must figure (1) the length of the partition process
and its costs, (2) the proper interest rate a buyer would demand,
and (3) the value of a 25-percent fee simple after partition.
B. What a Purchaser Would Pay
1. Partition
In partition suits, Mississippi courts tend to favor
equitable partition-in-kind over an outright sale of the entire
property. Shaw v. Shaw, 603 So.2d 287, 290 (Miss. 1992).
Petitioner's expert, William C. Smith, Jr. (Smith), was of the
opinion that a contested partition would take from 2 to 5 years
to resolve at a total cost of about $1,150,000 to $1,500,000,
which would be borne equally by the parties. Members of the
Barge family testified that they would resist any attempt to
partition the timberland. We are not convinced that such
resistance would be undertaken just for the sake of delay, since
it would not be cost free. Resistance might be mounted to obtain
an advantageous partition, however. We judge that a partition
action would take 4 years, and that the party initiating such
action would bear one-half of total partition costs of
$1,325,000.
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