PARTY-WALL is the wall dividing two houses or tenements, and which is. in a cer tain sense, one and indivisible, though the property of two or. more parties. The ques tion as to who is the owner of any particular part of the party-wall, is solved by ascer taining who is the owner of the soil on which it is built. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is presumed that half of the soil belongs to the owner on one side, and the other half to the owner of the other side; and, unless the wall has stood twenty years and upwards, each owner can do what he likes with his own half, and can pare it away if he likes. But in general, mutual interest prevents each party from resorting to his strict legal rights. A practice exists for one who builds a house adjoining the wall of a neighbor, to pay for half the expense. In Scotland, a party building close to the wall of another's house can compel the owner of the first house to give him half of the wall or gable, on paying half the expense; while in England there is no such compulsion.
In Scotland, where the practice exists of building houses in flats lying each upon the other, the law is not clearly settled, and requires to be cleared up as to what is the nature of the property or interest which each proprietor of a flat has in that part of the gable bounding his own flat. The better opinion is, that each is the entire owner of his half of the gable, the others having merely cross servitudes; and hence it follows, that if the flats on .both sides of a gable belong to one owner, he can make a communication through the gable, provided he do not injure the chininey-flucs of the lower flats or the stability of the structure.