Private Road?
There is a link to a drawing on the first Reddit thread, which is linked somewhere in this forum's thread.
First thread on Reddit
Image:
<img src="" http://i.imgur.com/cTGdIPu.pn g"
" alt="" />
The poster has stated that the blue owner had used purple access prior to the recent sale. This was the established access. I agree that we may not know all of the details. But this is very bad and if I was the pink owner, I would be taking immediate legal action. Cease and desist, criminal trespass and harassment to begin with and anything else that an attorney can tack on...
access should have never been extinguished (animal fencing or not). In Louisiana, one must show ingress/egress to property on a boundary plat.
Maybe he can post a sign that it is a private road and all unauthorized use is subject to a toll. Let's say $100 or $2500.00 monthly. 😉
Easement by implication comes to mind.
I do not know who told you that permission could be considered a precedent. In these parts permission is revocable and a real easy way to avoid Adverse Possession / Prescriptive Easement.
If you have sat down with the, I do not understand why you didn't kick out the lawyers and resolve the situation like normal people. Did they intend to leave themselves landlocked or did their lawyer overlook a pesky thing like access?
I have a similar situation. The Trespasser built a new road over the top of an existing trail. It's obvious trespass, the Sheriff says its not, its a civil matter. The first thing the Trespasser does is claim its a Prescriptive Easement. Three years later and a lot of legal bills the Trespasser is still using the road. You need to find a good "Dirt" lawyer quick. Gating the road off just aids in the Trespasser proving his open and notorious use, if he cuts the lock and ignores it. You can issue them a license to use the access which can be revoked at anytime to inhibit the claim of a Prescriptive Easement. You need to gauge the potential pool of jurors to see if they are pro access or not to get a feel for your success in Court. If you have a very strong love for your privacy go to Court. If not I recommend selling the Trespasser an easement to his property. In Montana you have a 50/50 chance in Court, with the person having the biggest liar as an Attorney usually winning. These are very frustrating cases and cause a lot of bad feelings between neighbors.
I liked the goat suggestion in the responses.
I remember reading that if you landlock yourself the courts will not help you.
Do you know what Shaun's background is?
I wish someone here could find a GIS with air photo plot.
If the Blue parcel was originally part of the Pink and the road used when Blue was split off, then maybe the implied or necessary easement goes through Pink, but don't have that data and all the timing. Even with that might have been canceled when Blue and purple where the same owner, but was it actually the same owner. Just not enough data, but on the face of it seems like the guy landlocked himself.
JPH and Big E raise an interesting point about a land division that creates a landlocked parcel. I am wondering if the parcel division went through any kind of local subdivision approval.
The state statute in MN (Chapter 462.358, Subd. 4b) says that if there is a local subdivision law, land divisions need to be approved by the local planning authority, which might be a city, a county, or a civil township. Parcels of agricultural or residential land larger than 20 acres are exempt. If a division has not received its required approval, the County Recorder is supposed to refuse to record the deed.
All Minnesota land surveyors know about this, of course. Sometimes we have to explain it to a client who wants to sell off part of his property.
In my experience, recorders are pretty careful about watching out for such un-approved parcels. If the deed is for a new parcel that is not already on the record, the recorder will expect to see a stamp and signature on it from a planning official, saying that the land division has been approved. If there is no stamp, they won't record the deed.
There may be a few areas in MN that don't have subdivision ordinances in place, but there can't be many of them. I don't know of any. Subdivision ordinances vary, but I don't believe any planning official would approve a division that created a landlocked parcel.
So the questions would be, 1) is there a subdivision ordinance, 2) if so, was the neighbor's land division approved, 3) if it was approved, why did the planning officials allow the creation of a landlocked parcel, and 4) has a deed actually been recorded, or is there perhaps nothing but a purchase agreement or an unrecorded contract for deed?
KJac, your attorney will likely know about this if he/she works with real estate to any extent. An attorney who specializes in divorces or DUIs would probably have to look it up.
With or without an attorney, you can also get hold of your local officials and ask these questions. The situation will be easier to understand with some more hard information.
The first step would be to find out whether there is a local planning official with authority over land divisions. That official, if there is one, can tell you whether or not this land division was approved, and if so explain how it was handled. It's all public information. Such an official can also explain the local regulations.
An excerpt:
agreywood 89 points 1 day ago
It sounds like your neighbor might be telling the sheriff that your road goes through to their land and always has, rather than ending at your garage and requiring them to drive their car over your landscaping.
mattolol 61 points 1 day ago
That is possible. I did not hear what they told him and I would not put it past them.
GroundsKeeper2 2 points 4 hours ago
Do you know where you property lines are, for sure?
At our current house, our property lines were found to be wrong. We had to demolish a storage shack and build it 12 feet to the right of its original location.
mattolol 4 points 3 hours ago
Yes. We had it it confirmed by two different people. Both are recommended by the county.
The first time was when we bought the property.
The second time was when we planted some trees. The neighbors claimed that we were planting trees on their land. We had the land checked again to be 100% sure.
The estimates were slightly different from one another, but by less than a foot. Maybe 8 inches tops.
GroundsKeeper2 3 points 3 hours ago
That's good to hear.
You addressed a question to KJac, but I don't think it's his problem, just something he found interesting for discussion.
I saw something in the Reddit threads that indicated there were several parcels already in existence for a long time under one or two ownerships, and were then more recently sold off. So if there was already a separate legal description they probably didn't have to get any regulatory approval.
Bill, I kinda thought that you might pick up my challenge and do some interweb detective work to find a nice GIS view. I know we are only hearing the pink side of the story but it really does sound compelling to me.
I spent a while searching for the poster's user name but didn't come up with any definitive clues to his full name or address. The Whitepages search for what I guessed his last name might be (truncation of the user name) came up with three hits in MN but none of the location maps looked like a recently developed neighborhood with a north-south street to the west of the address.
Maybe somebody else will have better luck.
> - What is the "driveway"? Is it truly a driveway or is it an old road bed that has existed for 100 years? The distinction could be crucial.
Yeah, I'm wondering that too. The position of the house, with the driveway going to "our road" in the sketch makes it look like it might be an old road, which may be why the neighbor thinks that he can use it for access, and he might be right. Even if the road is no longer used, maintained by the town, or has been discontinued, private rights of the abutters may exist in it.
In my town there are more than a few dirt paths which are still public roads, even though they look like nothing more than either a woods road or driveway.
> I spent a while searching for the poster's user name but didn't come up with any definitive clues to his full name or address. The Whitepages search for what I guessed his last name might be (truncation of the user name) came up with three hits in MN but none of the location maps looked like a recently developed neighborhood with a north-south street to the west of the address.
>
> Maybe somebody else will have better luck.
Yeah, my quick efforts yesterday led me down the path that he might be a doctor that might have once been affiliated with Our Lady of the Lake in Louisiana...
Yes, in addition there may be an easement written in the chain of title that does not show up in the current deed. Also could be the road/drive in question is along an aliquot line and easement exists by statute/patent/constitution.
