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Neighbor easement problem
The bottom line the way I see it is, does the guy have the money to pay for damages you may ultimately win thru litigation? Probably not....that's probably the reason he isn't taking care of the easment in the first place.
You need to determine some way if he has the money to rectify this problem or you're just throwing your money away. Don't be fooled into thinking a judgement of any kind will do you any good if he doesn't have the money. A judgement will likely be junior to other perfected liens as in the mortgage holder. You would then need to buy out the first lien holder to gain ownership in order to sell the property to recover your judgement.....not likley a good solution. Or wait until he sells the property and hopefully collect if there's any equity.
Too many people believe litigation is the ulitmate solution. It rarely is. Money and the willingness to use it to solve the problem is. If he has niether, learn to live with it, otherwise you'll just be out more money and frustration and in the end the attorneys will win....they always do when it comes to litigation.
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Neighbor easement problem
You need a real estate atty.
I say let the road become impassable. Then no one will be using it,and document it somehow.
Maine (for example) 20 yrs. of use to qualify for an easement. And it is possible to have landlocked property.
Not all states are the same, Spend the money on a lawyer,fix the road, or put up with it.
These issues are much to complicated to sort out here.
Lic. real estate boker since 1984.
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Neighbor easement problem
I live in Ga. too and have seen the outcome of this type of situation first hand. The court will do nothing for you in the long run. Even if you get a judgement against the neighbor, the chances are that he doesnt really have to do anything about it. It takes the court so long to act on anything, and then its mostly just threats. I would suggest working it out with the neighbor, its cheaper and a whole lot less stressful for you. Besides, if the guy is vindictive, he could do something else, like paint a fence electric pink on your side of the property for your dailey viewing pleasure. Good luck
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Neighbor easement problem
I a little late on this because all the right answers have been given. Here it goes anyway. I dont know the specifics of GA, I was a real estate agent in MD for awhile. Its true that after a certain time period, if you allow him to use the land, he will be granted ownership of it. Its been a number of years but I thought that was called "perceptive easement" not "perscriptive". Maybe different for different states. If that hasnt happened and you just cant leave it be and it turns out that he doesnt have deeded access through your property, another solution that would be considered a compromise would be to start leasing the ground to him. I dont recommend court to anyone but if left with no choice, this may be an option to look at. Ask for $75 a month and the court may compromise at $40. That would be enough to cover most future maintenance.
Again, I think I would try to get over it but I dont know your situation. I know Ive got a next door neighbor that doesnt exactly take pride in his house. It used to bother me. At one point I was actually considering offering him a reasonable amount for his house just to get rid of him. Now I can joke around about it and I feel much better. All I know is I would take three eroded drives over one trashy neighbor.
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Neighbor easement problem
I think I would just leave it alone and do the best I could to block the view from my house. I was reading on another board (sorry Chief) about a land easement issue and it looks like it will end up costing the guy his house as well as his savings because he was trying to make a point. You never know how the judge will rule now days. I have an easement down the side of my property for the farmer to get to his 30 acres behind and beside my property. The farmer will end up selling and houses will be built there, so I have all ready taken precautions such as putting up a fence and clearly marking all of the surveyors pins. I cut the grass on both sides of my fence but let the easement grow up. I could care less, I don't use it and figure if it is full of holes and in pretty bad shape, it will at least slow down the people using it.
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Neighbor easement problem
Cherymax-
I'm less concerned about whether you pursue this in court than that you know what your position is and what your options are. I certainly wasn't advocating "Sue the SOB."
There's been a lot of incorrect or partially correct information in the thread and you need to make certain you have dotted i's and crossed t's. For instance, the concept of prescriptive easement and adverse possession are being intertwined in the discussion. An easement relates to use of land owned by another. Adverse possession relates to acquisition of one person's land by another person. From your description of the situation, one or more elements of adverse possession seem to be missing. For instance, adverse possession requires the gaining party to have paid property tax on the disputed land.
Dealing with land disputes is a specialized area of the law. If you see this going forward into some form of dispute, seeking the advice of an attorney with special expertise in this area would be a good first step.
Eric (still not a lawyer)
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Neighbor easement problem
Just curious but is there some kind of State law saying he has to maintain this road? If so, how well does he have to maintain it? To your standards or his?
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Neighbor easement problem
Toller, I think I used the expression "adverse possession". I agree that "adverse possession" is very difficult for any land user to obtain (clearly I am not a lawyer). An attorney once told me adverse possession was really meant for ranchers vs farmers where a party had to fight to get their cattle to water every day. Adverse possession requires an actual battle for survival to be taking place.
In NY, my attorney told me more likely in cases like the one described was "right-of-way (or easement) by way of necessity". I am confusing "easement" and "right-of-way" since I am not an attorney.
I gave a highly respected land attorney about $1500 and did everything he told me to do to get an easement for my landlocked property. I had a survey completed, documented the old wood trail, brought it to the counties attention for the tax map. He said it would be a piece of cake to get the easement on my deed. Then when I came in and said - OK, get the deed updated with the "right-of-way" he all of a sudden started backing off and saying there had been a recent case with a "city judge" that didn't come out the way he expected. The judge gave an easement but not with utilities or some other outcome which was less than adequate.
I decided to forego the legal route, purchase more property, so that I could trade land for a right of way with a number of potential neighbors. My only point is that you can't trust the attorney's initial assessment of probability of success, and that you could very well be out of several thousand dollars with no results.
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Neighbor easement problem
Ncrunch-
Just looked at your pics. Nice house. That was quite a patio project.
Anyway, what you may well have run into is the issue I'm sort of leaning on. A lot of general practice attorneys think that land disputes just aren't a big deal. They recall vaguely about them from law school and take the case. Then they discover just how intricate a land dispute can become and they either screw it up or bail.
A typical adverse possession is a case where a fence is mis-located such that it is say 5 feet inside the property line. Depending on what happens from that point, at some future time the neighbor might be able to acquire that 5 foot strip under adverse possession. Prescriptive easement and adverse possession are commonly confused. The memory trick is that easements don't convey ownership, merely use. There may be a lot of restrictions on the owner's use that go with an easement but the owner is still the owner. An example is the utility across the back property line of houses in suburbia. You can plant your shrubs and grass there to a fairtheewell but the utility company doesn't have to take any precautions to protect them if maintenance is required on the buried cable. On the other hand, don't try to build your swimming pool so that it lies atop the easement. The power company will fuss like you've not imagined until you remove it.
One of my tasks at work is management of almost 300 parcels equaling about 15,000 acres of land owned by a department of state government. We are forever wrestling with easement and access issues and I've sort of given up trying to guess what's right in a new situation. It seems like the general rule of thumb is that the general rule doesn't apply.
Eric
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Neighbor easement problem
Toller,
You seem to be a pretty knowledgeable guy! Can you answer my earlier post?
Just curious but is there some kind of State law saying he has to maintain this road? If so, how well does he have to maintain it? To your standards or his?
Billy
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