Joint Asset in an Individual Chart of Accounts

[Lincoln A. Baxter]

Hi All,

I have been using Gnucash for going on 4 years now. I manage my personal
accounts and assets.  Great software. I love the rigor provided by the
double entry accounting system. 

My partner (who does not use gnucash) and I account for our assets
individually.  She is not a GC user.  I account for our shared expenses
via assests:owed_to_me accounts. When we split expenses the cost of the
expense gets gets split between the my expense account and the assests
account for what she owes me, and then she writes me a check which
Zero's out the owed to me asset.  It works great.

Now I have an "interesting" problem: Recently we bought a second home in
both of our names, which we will be "renting" to her son (and some
roommates).  The property is jointly owned property, and I am trying get
clear in my head a clean way to account for for this.

I'v just about to set this up in GC, and currently have a Expense (soon
probably multiple expenses), an Assets, and soon, a Liabilities account
(for the Mortgage), as well as an Income Account (for the "rent"), named
for this property.  What I am struggling with, and why am writing the
message, is how to account for the fact that I have 50% not 100%
ownership in this property:

1) I could create a Liability account that represents my partner's share
of the Assets, and then transfer 50% of the assets into that account,
periodically. That is how I think I would handle her share of the down
payment for instance.  (I am leaning this way)

or,

2) I could create a separate set of books for this property, and
periodically adjust my assests by the amounts in the other books.  The
problem is I want to manage this through my checking account, and that
would require more cross books accounting complexity than I think I
want.  

Does anyone on this list have any other suggestions or experience with
using CG to account for this kind of relationship? (common vs individual
assests), or any comments on the choices I articulated above?

Thanks,

Lincoln