[When Is Consent to Division Obligatory?]

Answer—and Allah is the One who grants success and aid: The jurists of the madhhab have mentioned seven conditions—five for the validity of division, and two for compelling the one who refuses to divide—namely:
1. Delivery in kind of each share (tawfiyat al-naṣīb min al-jins), except in alternation (muhāyāh).
2. That the division not entail a further division … etc.
If these conditions are met, the partner must comply with the judge’s order; if he does not comply, the judge compels him to divide.
The proofs for the obligation of division when a partner requests it and the conditions are fulfilled are several:
1. Every owner has the greater claim to his property and is most entitled to what he has acquired.
2. No proof has come requiring partnership or its continuation—except what enters under (binding) contracts, or what the Law has required to be shared, such as pasture, water, etc.
3. Allah Most High has made obligatory, in the verses of inheritance, for every heir an apportioned share—an eighth, a third, a sixth, etc.—and each heir’s receipt and beneficial use of his portion cannot be realized except by division. Therefore division is obligatory, for whatever is necessary to fulfill an obligation becomes obligatory like it.
4. What is established in the well-known ḥadīth: “There is to be no harm and no reciprocating harm in Islam.” Thus, if one partner’s withholding of his fellow’s share harms his fellow, that is unlawful, as this ḥadīth indicates.
Moreover, Islam came—with its legislation—for people’s public and private interests; among that is the legislation of division. Allah, the Exalted, said: “And when the division is made, those who are closest in kinship shall be present” [An-Nisa:8]. It is related from the Prophet of Allah (May Allah bless him and his family and grant them peace) that he apportioned the spoils of Khaybar into eighteen shares—one share for every hundred of the Muslims, and they were eighteen hundred; likewise [he apportioned] the spoils of Badr. The Prophet (May Allah bless him and his family and grant them peace) had apportioners (qussām), and ʿAlī (Peace be Upon Him) was an apportioner; likewise the rest of the Imams, and so on.
On the basis of the foregoing, the partner mentioned in the question must obey the judge’s order to divide.
If, however, this partner who refuses division does so because he expects harm to result from the division, then it is incumbent upon the judge to consider his claim of harm from division and thereafter act upon what he deems sound after due consideration.

 NOTE: Al-muhāyāh is a division of benefits in the tangible assets among the partners by succession and rotation.

Source: Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.2