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I'm a literal road lawyer. I look at tons of title documents to roads. How the gently caress is your road privately owned? Complain top the city make them take it over.
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Oct 14, 2018 03:40
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*shrug* I literally have no idea how or why that happens, I can only presume it's an artifact of the HOA and the subdividing process. Also, we're not within any city limits. Township, but that's it. I think if anyone was to take it over, it'd have to be the county.
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Oct 14, 2018 04:21
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Hot Dog Day #91 posted:I'm a literal road lawyer. I look at tons of title documents to roads. How the gently caress is your road privately owned? Complain top the city make them take it over. When a developer builds the road, intending to dedicate it as ROW to a local government, doesn't the government typically require it to meet certain standards? Is there any benefit or reason for the HOA to have previously kept ownership the road, other than being lazy about paperwork?
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Oct 14, 2018 04:52
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Based on the size of the lots, my guess is that it was once a farm type tract that got split up and sold into a handful of lots, and the "HOA" is little more than a poorly conceived attempt to make sure the road he built gets kept up with.
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Oct 14, 2018 05:25
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Speaking of neighborhood stuff... I enjoy stargazing and my recent favorite spot got bought out and developed. I found a remote plat in my current neighborhood without a house on it that would be as close to ideal as I can hope for in my area. How do I find out who owns it to ask for permission to set up on it every once in a while? Is it even something to worry about unless someone gets pissed and tells me to leave?
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Oct 14, 2018 05:25
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sleepy.eyes posted:Speaking of neighborhood stuff... I enjoy stargazing and my recent favorite spot got bought out and developed. I found a remote plat in my current neighborhood without a house on it that would be as close to ideal as I can hope for in my area. How do I find out who owns it to ask for permission to set up on it every once in a while? If you know the address, go to the county appraisal district website. If you don't, look on Google for a [your county] GIS(geographic information systems/service?) Map. As for whether it's better to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission, 
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Oct 14, 2018 05:27
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blarzgh posted:Based on the size of the lots, my guess is that it was once a farm type tract that got split up and sold into a handful of lots, and the "HOA" is little more than a poorly conceived attempt to make sure the road he built gets kept up with. Yeah. Many places now are refusing to add public roads if you are subdividing, so they instead want you to take on the maintenance burden. But by default, generally they don't want houses to be landlocked. It's an interesting question, because there's probably an easement of necessity that runs along that road (especially as it exists and is currently in use by residents). But if you are refusing to maintain it or pay taxes on it... dunno how the county would react.
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Oct 14, 2018 06:40
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Zauper posted:Yeah. Many places now are refusing to add public roads if you are subdividing, so they instead want you to take on the maintenance burden. Iowa is riddled with unbelievably cheap and lazy cities that will look for any possible way to avoid paying for things that you normally consider public utilities.. The only legitimate reason I know of for private road ownership is because oftentimes these roads are used by 3 vehicles a day and they're all farm trucks that go to the same place and are owned by the company or person that exclusively uses the road. The county will build roads a mile or two apart, and then just let the farmer figure out how to get his stuff into town or to the highway.
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Oct 14, 2018 07:58
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my town in new jersey made it very clear to me their responsibility wrt my water and sewer started and stopped at the main, which is literally in the middle of the street. when i had a plumbing problem, if it had moved two feet the other direction i would have apparently been personally responsible for digging up the street and replacing it, which seems insane to me.
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Oct 14, 2018 09:18
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I legitimately don't think Texas has this type of private road, outside of like fully gate communities. They could exist of course, but most cities and counties are happy to own it, maintain it, let utilities go through it, and charge you for it ultimately via your taxes.
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Oct 14, 2018 12:06
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In my part of florida they have different colored street signs based on whether a road is public or privately maintained. Public signs are standard green while private roads are blue. Most private roads are either in the country, wealthy subdivisions, or extremely poor dirt roads in the middle of town. They also usually have a sign posted that says “this road not maintained by x county.”
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Oct 14, 2018 12:50
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The big difference in places that aren’t the horrible South is the responsibility for snow removal. I’ve literally litigated this issue.
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Oct 14, 2018 13:18
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blarzgh posted:Based on the size of the lots, my guess is that it was once a farm type tract that got split up and sold into a handful of lots quote:and the "HOA" is little more than a poorly conceived attempt to make sure the road he built gets kept up with. Zauper posted:But if you are refusing to maintain it or pay taxes on it... dunno how the county would react. I don't think anyone is refusing, I think the group just didn't realize. As for maintenance, we HAVE been taking care of that, just not as HOA actions. Snow removal and road grading has been funded by the neighborhood households directly: for example, last summer when it needed grading, someone contracted a company to do it, and then just went door to door when it was done asking each person to make out a check directly to the company for their share of the cost.
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Oct 14, 2018 15:46
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Bad Munki posted:Snow removal and road grading has been funded by the neighborhood households directly: for example, last summer when it needed grading, someone contracted a company to do it, and then just went door to door when it was done asking each person to make out a check directly to the company for their share of the cost. So it sounds like there's an informal HOA, but no official one? E: reread it, you said it was disbanded. Lawyers, if the board just neglected to do anything, could they be liable in some way for not BonerGhost fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Oct 14, 2018 |
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Oct 14, 2018 17:00
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Hey so me and my mom were looking at my lawyer fees from December last year and he charged $7,000 for court fees when he was in court for literally 20 minutes. It was a legal separation thing and we were the only ones there. He left for a long time to do some other case and get lunch or something. Side note: his lawyer friend came up to him and my lawyer was like "I'm just here to get a paycheck." Literally. Furthermore, he dragged out the divorce case because I wanted the cats, but cats are property in my state so there's no way I would have won them. A good lawyer would have been like "nope no cats," but this guy dragged it out from May to December/January. My ex (were on good terms now) said that his lawyer said that mine would wait days to respond to emails to drag it out furtther. And was charging me the whole time. It went from $19K to $26K cause of that $7K of him being in the court room like 10 minutes. (My reasoning is that he knew my ex had a good job so he thought he could get his money, and also the cats, which would look god on him~~~~ cause he's a scumbag piece of poo poo. It NEVER should have cost this much. My ex even said he had a good settlement where he would pay for the rest of my cats and stuff and was really nice but I NEVER SAW IT. Any advice? I had called the bar association and they redirected me to some stupid service that was like "we don't care about charge disputes." Or something along those lines. They have been legitimately extorting me for money for a long time and made me sign some agreement that I'll pay them $150 a month but I got sick and couldn't pay them. Now they're trying to make me sign up on some sketchy website that automatically drafts money from your credit card (mine are maxed out anyways). Hellllllppppp Thin Privilege fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 05:32
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Oct 15, 2018 06:50
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We like our stories to be original, don't steal from Reddit.
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Oct 15, 2018 07:21
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I would have charged $14,000.
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Oct 15, 2018 12:38
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God drat, dude. I can't compete with that, roads are relatively boring. Update if anyone wants it: Called the county treasurer. Person I talked to said someone had already been in and they were working on it. She called it, and I quote, "an oddball situation." She wasn't the person working the thing, it sounds like it was someone further up the chain, but basically, it sounds like it's getting handled, but there's some paperwork to sort out. The big thing was, I asked her why anyone would bother even trying to buy a private road. Like, what are they going to do, close it and landlocked six homes? And she said that basically, the way the tax sales work here, they sometimes don't even know what they're getting and yeah, they definitely CAN'T do that. She wasn't sure who from our neighborhood had come in, but I had an idea, so I went and knocked on a neighbor's door this morning. Talked to his wife, but the general story goes something like this: 1) Some number of years ago, Original Developer develops our neighborhood. Owns another 40 acre lot for eventual development nearby. 2) Original Developer goes through divorce, sells development interests (including future-dev lot) to one of the neighborhood locals as New Developer. 3) Original Developer fails to sign over shared road parcel as common property or whatever (this would have meant it would not be subject to taxes), New Developer thought he was getting the whole thing or some such. 4) What should be a tax-less common property road parcel goes up for tax sale. From what I heard from the treasurer, this is what makes it odd, because that shouldn't have happened in the first place. 5) Company that feeds on tax sales buys tax lien, pays taxes (of which there shouldn't have been any), sends somewhat amateurishly written letter to neighborhood locals. 6) ??? 7) profit So yeah, from talking to the treasurer and neighbor (who, incidentally, is/was also the president of our now-defunct HOA), it's all just a bit of a screwup on what taxes were owed, but is totally resolvable and we'll probably get to tell the marginally shady company to pound sand in the process. Arcturas posted:I'm not terribly familiar with how the law works on landlocked properties and granting easements, but from what I vaguely remember you only get an easement/guaranteed access when you're buying or acquiring a property. So if some rear end in a top hat sells you a landlocked parcel in the middle of their land, you typically get an easement for access because the courts figure that nobody would reasonably buy property without access. But if you buy property and later lose access, I think you're hosed. The idea is that if you once had access, and you let the access get taken away, that's kind of on you. From what I understood before, and based on my conversation with the county offices this morning, I think you have this backwards. That is, if you have some land and have access through an easement or similar, and someone tries to revoke your access, that's a no-no. But if you knowingly walk into a land-locked situation and buy land with no access, that's on you. The specifics can get messy, of course, but that's the general idea. Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 15:15
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Bad Munki posted:From what I understood before, and based on my conversation with the county offices this morning, I think you have this backwards. That is, if you have some land and have access through an easement or similar, and someone tries to revoke your access, that's a no-no. But if you knowingly walk into a land-locked situation and buy land with no access, that's on you. The specifics can get messy, of course, but that's the general idea. I can assure you that's how it work in my state. There are plenty of parcels of land being sold as hunting properties that literally have no access other than the goodwill of a neighbor or two, with no documented easement at all. If a sale could trigger a legal easement everyone would be selling these properties to their brother/cousin/wife/kid to immediately increase the parcels value.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:26
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Yeah, pretty much that. If anyone wants, I'll post a final update once it's all sorted out, but otherwise, it looks like not so big a deal that'll be handled soon and without great expense.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:31
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If you guys want a fuuuuuicking diatribe on easements, I will put you to sleep with one. But basically three things: 1. Every state is a little different, but generally the same. 2. If the property is landlocked when purchased, it stays landlocked. 3. If the property becomes landlocked after purchase, it can (with prior use, usually) get a special circumstances easement to access it.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:40
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Bad Munki posted:Yeah, pretty much that. Yes please
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Oct 15, 2018 15:41
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blarzgh posted:If you guys want a fuuuuuicking diatribe on easements, I will put you to sleep with one. Tell us about flag lots, and if there are implied easements along the 'flag pole'
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Oct 15, 2018 15:46
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blarzgh posted:3. If the property becomes landlocked after purchase, it can (with prior use, usually) get a special circumstances easement to access it. This in particular is what I envisioned and why I wasn't really sweating the whole thing from the get-go. I mean, I wasn't sweating it at ALL, personally, because a few hours with a skid loader would have my existing driveway hooked up to the public road system, bypassing the shared road completely. But from a neighborhood perspective, I wasn't too worried either, because I figure something like the above is pretty normal.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:46
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Motronic posted:I can assure you that's how it work in my state. There are plenty of parcels of land being sold as hunting properties that literally have no access other than the goodwill of a neighbor or two, with no documented easement at all. If a sale could trigger a legal easement everyone would be selling these properties to their brother/cousin/wife/kid to immediately increase the parcels value. In a completely different system which has really really old-timey land laws there are multiple remedies for landlocked properties. One is that at the outset, the municipal authority won't allow any parcels of land that don't have a registered easement of access AND road use (and water and sewage and power etc. etc.) without specific dispensation that they usually do not give out. Another is access right through I guess you could call it prescriptive easement which I think many US states have as well. Then there's a special law to deal with landlocked properties through a special land court which can (and usually does) just forcibly establish an easement with a token monetary compensation. There other more obscure ways, but those are the main ones. The poo poo-out-of-luck properties are really rare as a result and I'd be surprised if even the US doesn't have a ton of remedies to establishing access.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:47
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blarzgh posted:If you guys want a fuuuuuicking diatribe on easements, I will put you to sleep with one. Oh okay, well then yes please attempt to put me to sleep.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:48
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Devor posted:Tell us about flag lots, and if there are implied easements along the 'flag pole' I wish I could find the one I was reading about a while back. Wasn't actually quite a flag, but it should have been. Something like, farmer owns a square with a back corner subdivided out. Has a sort of easement through his own lot to his own lot along the boundary, I think there was an established driveway there he uses, or at least worn in ruts. He sells that back lot, without a formal easement. Then builds a fence across the front of his property, effectively cutting off the new residents. Along that edge, going back toward the landlocked lot, is another property, a neighbor, and they have a driveway along that edge, for their own use. It's gated and everything. New, landlocked neighbor decides gate/driveway-having neighbor is their new access, like it or not. Queue many lawyers, calls to the sheriff, etc. Sheriff is like, "Well, just let them use your driveway until this gets sorted out," lawyer is like "No, that'll establish precedent of your driveway being their easement," bystander owner is like, "I'm not giving them a loving key to my gate," new owner is like "You can't stop me," and it goes on. I'd really like to know how that one ended up playing out, but I have no idea how to find it. e: Oh wait, I think this is it! My neighbors caused themselves to be landlocked. Now the sheriff wants me to let them use my road. I mis-remembered some details but there ya go. It's actually somewhat better than I recalled because the landlocked neighbors in question actually sold their own access and landlocked THEMSELVES.  e: Looks like there was resolution eventually: UPDATE: My neighbors caused themselves to be landlocked, I posted here, it's resolved now tl;dr: the self-landlocking dummies eventually moved out and sold the property to the neighbors they were trying to force an easement upon. House and lot were kind of garbage, and the original owners sold the place to the neighbors while it was collateral for a loan (lol!) but it more or less worked out, OP is satisfied, and dummies are out of the picture. Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 15:54
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Bad Munki posted:I wish I could find the one I was reading about a while back. Wasn't actually quite a flag, but it should have been. Something like, farmer owns a square with a back corner subdivided out. Has a sort of easement through his own lot to his own lot along the boundary, I think there was an established driveway there he uses, or at least worn in ruts. He sells that back lot, without a formal easement. Then builds a fence across the front of his property, effectively cutting off the new residents. Along that edge, going back toward the landlocked lot, is another property, a neighbor, and they have a driveway along that edge, for their own use. It's gated and everything. New, landlocked neighbor decides gate/driveway-having neighbor is their new access, like it or not. Queue many lawyers, calls to the sheriff, etc. Sheriff is like, "Well, just let them use your driveway until this gets sorted out," lawyer is like "No, that'll establish precedent of your driveway being their easement," bystander owner is like, "I'm not giving them a loving key to my gate," new owner is like "You can't stop me," and it goes on. I'd really like to know how that one ended up playing out, but I have no idea how to find it. I think I remember this exact post, I believe it was from reddit I remember is being the original owner subdividing and selling away his own access, then demanding an easement on the adjacent guy  So originally Parcel 2 owned a big L-shape, that surrounded Parcel 1. Parcel 2 owner decided he didn't need all that open property, so he sold the orange shape to a third party, who put up fence and used it for grazing. Parcel 2 then decided he would use driveway along Parcel 1, see "disputed access". Parcel 1 owner did not like that, installed (or just locked?) gate, and Parcel 2 owner called sheriff in order to get access, and everything went to hell. I think Sheriff sided with Parcel 2 for the first couple calls, since it doesn't make sense to not allow Parcel 2 access to his own property, but it turned out in favor of Parcel 1 because Parcel 2 had sold away his own existing access. I believe it ended up with Parcel 2 buying back a portion of the orange parcel, or Parcel 1 selling him some property. Edit: Hey, I was pretty close!
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Oct 15, 2018 16:13
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Also nothing works like it should. This complicated things greatly.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:15
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Bad Munki posted:e: Looks like there was resolution eventually: UPDATE: My neighbors caused themselves to be landlocked, I posted here, it's resolved now tl;dr: the self-landlocking dummies eventually moved out and sold the property to the neighbors they were trying to force an easement upon. House and lot were kind of garbage, and the original owners sold the place to the neighbors while it was collateral for a loan (lol!) but it more or less worked out, OP is satisfied, and dummies are out of the picture. If a third party issues a loan with property as the collateral, but no lien is recorded, does the lender have no recourse against the new owner if the property is sold, should the borrower default? If there WAS a lien recorded, but missed during sale of the property, does the lender have recourse against the new owner in the case of default?
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Oct 15, 2018 16:16
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Devor posted:I think I remember this exact post, I believe it was from reddit Did you draw that up just now? Mr. Nice! fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 16:16
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Devor posted:If a third party issues a loan with property as the collateral, but no lien is recorded, does the lender have no recourse against the new owner if the property is sold, should the borrower default? Even if they did, wouldn't that fall to the title insurance company, since that's their whole job, to ensure there's no hokey business like that hanging out there? Mr. Nice! posted:Did you draw that up just now? 
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Oct 15, 2018 16:18
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Devor posted:If a third party issues a loan with property as the collateral, but no lien is recorded, does the lender have no recourse against the new owner if the property is sold, should the borrower default? Depends on the state. Every state has slightly different rules on superiority of claims and timing rules for recording.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:18
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Nice piece of fish posted:Oh okay, well then yes please attempt to put me to sleep. This is Texas law: First off, an easement is like a pass; it belongs to the adjacent(dominant) property, and it burdens the tract across which it runs(subservient), and it runs with the land, which means if you sell the dominant estate, the easement stays in place. An easement cannot belong to a person - thats just a lease. An easement is a right in real property, which means it needs to be recorded to have an effect. If you have a written, signed, recorded easement, you have an "express easement." An unrecorded easement has no legal effect. If I say, "I have an easement" and its not recorded, and I try to come across your property you can lock me out and/or sue me for trespassing. Also, I can't just go record an easement that the owner of the subservient estate hasn't signed. The statute of frauds says that any transfer of real property (or a limited right to use real property) must be in writing and signed by the owner of the property against which the right is charged. So, if I don't have a signed, recorded easement but farmer brown still lets me use the road, then what do I do? Well, keep using the road until someone tries to stop me. Then, when they lock me out or sue me for trespass, I counter in one of two ways: 1. Trespass to Try Title: a lawsuit seeking a judgment that declares rights and tenements into real property - Judge says, "here is what rights everyone has in this land." 2. Affirmative Defense to Trespass: "Yes, I'm trespassing, but I have a defense to trespass and that defense is the unrecorded right to use this road or whatever." There are several kinds of 'unrecorded' easements that you can raise as part of your claim in the lawsuit. A) easement by prescription - Basically, its Adverse Possession of the easement. You used it, adversely, for X years, so now you have it. Its a limitations defense/ B) easement by necessity - The land was split up and sold, thus the buyer of the landlocked tract is entitled to an easement to access it. C) easement by estoppel - The owner of the subservient estate orally represented that you could use the road, or their actions were so obvious and clear that you had an easement that the Court is going to decide that you actually had an easement, even if one was never recorded. So, if you sue or get sued, and raise one of these claims and win, you get a judgment that says you have an easement. However, easements can "die," and their cause of death is different per kinds of easements. - Expiration by its own terms. Only really applies to express (written, recorded) easements. If it says, "I last for 50 years" then it dies at 51 years and no other kind of easement can rise up and take its place. - Abandonment. If you just quit using the road for a while, then eventually any easement (other than an express easement) will just die. - Joinder. When easement by necessity or prescription is across one tract of land, going to another, if the owner of one of those tracts buys the other tract then there is no longer the "necessity" element, and no longer the "adverse use" element of the claims respectively, therefore the easement dies. - New Access. In some cases, if a new point of access to the otherwise landlocked tract becomes available, an easement by necessity will die. The easement is no longer necessary if the landlocked tract gets a new highway put in behind it or buys an easement from some other tract, etc. So when a lawsuit gets filed, you will do an analysis of the title history of the two tracts, and look for an express, recorded easement - if there isn't one, then you create a time line, and mark down times when an easement might have been created by necessity/prescription/estoppel. Then you mark down times when said easements might have died. For each point on the timeline, you know you have fact questions that will need to be proved/disproved in Court, and you plan you case. SNOOOORRRRREEEE
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Oct 15, 2018 16:24
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Bad Munki posted:In Eagle? Microstation 
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Oct 15, 2018 16:26
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Bad Munki posted:Even if they did, wouldn't that fall to the title insurance company, since that's their whole job, to ensure there's no hokey business like that hanging out there? It would fall to the title company to make good, yes... but a title policy is not a legal requirement, so I'd expect dummies who landlocked themselves also probably thought they were too smart to pay the $500 for one.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:27
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blarzgh posted:It would fall to the title company to make good, yes... but a title policy is not a legal requirement, so I'd expect dummies who landlocked themselves also probably thought they were too smart to pay the $500 for one. "Watch me landlock my property and expect to use my neighbor's driveway going forward" said the guy who definitely would buy title insurance and hire a good lawyer. blarzgh, what would you expect a judgment to be if the Reddit case went to court at the point of "let me use your driveway, the sheriff said you gotta"?
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Oct 15, 2018 16:33
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blarzgh posted:This is Texas law: Wow gently caress me for thinking we have dissimilar systems. Other than our extras, that looks remarkably familiar.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:35
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Nice piece of fish posted:Wow gently caress me for thinking we have dissimilar systems. Other than our extras, that looks remarkably familiar. Property law is all old common law and dates back thousands of years. How to divide property and how to use it is probably one of the oldest legal questions. It's pretty similar everywhere even if you don't have english common law as a backbone of your courts because the problems and obvious solutions are universally the same. Specific answers on things vary wildly like how much time for adverse possession or easement by prescription, but generally speaking property law is property law.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:47
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