Had the client giving me a nice tour of his 100+ acre tract which is bordered on the west by a railroad right-of-way along it's entire length.?ÿ Just to the west of the railroad ROW is a US Highway ROW of substantial width.?ÿ As we are driving near the railroad ROW, he points off to the southwest he casually says, "I guess I own some land on the other side of the highway but I've never been able to figure out where it is."
WHAT???!!!???!!!
So, I make a little trip to the courthouse today to try to figure out what on Earth he was talking about.?ÿ Wouldn't you know it.?ÿ Some silly attorney screwed the pooch.
Many years ago, Mr. Hamilton owned all of the client's property plus a large chunk of land on the other side of the highway, but in the same quarter section.?ÿ In about 1988, when the agricultural world was being turned upside down from a financial standpoint, Mr. Hamilton had deeded all of his land west of the highway to the bank and they released his mortgage on everything.?ÿ When Mr. Hamilton died the attorney handling his estate deeded his land to my client.?ÿ The obvious problem was that he worked from the deed when Mr. Hamilton had acquired all the land and did not realize that part of it was no longer owned by the late Mr. Hamilton.
Now, I'm the dirty bird who gets to tell my client that he never owned any land on the other side of the highway despite his deed saying that he did.
Should be interesting dilemma for the county who had been collecting taxes on said un owned land...
silly attorney....
Should be interesting dilemma for the county who had been collecting taxes on said un owned land...
silly attorney....
I doubt that's a problem for the county. They will have been collecting taxes from the actual owner of that land, I would expect, since a deed was passed on it.
The County GIS map shows it is being taxed correctly.
?ÿ
@peter-lothian I don't know how real estate taxes are done outside my own town. I'll briefly describe how my town does it so others can be aware of potential pitfalls.
There is a not-too-outdated layer in a state map viewer that visually shows approximate lot boundaries. You could measure the area of that shape; my lot is 3.02 acres that way. But, unless the taxpayer complains to the town assessor, the value is determined by an algorithm that includes the area given on the "lister card" which nowadays is a computer database. If the deed or recorded plat gives an area, that value is placed on the "lister card" regardless of the area of the shape in the GIS system. For my lot, that's 3.1 acre.
Bottom line is, there's no telling what area was used in computing the property value for tax purposes until you ask the tax department.
My background on this matter: I'm a justice of the peace, and therefore sit on the board that hears appeals of property values for tax purposes.
This happens frequently here, a farmer/rancher owns a 1/4 section and sells off everything west of a road, or river, or railroad and the 1/4 gets deeded to the next grantee as a whole. It creates confusion, but rarely does it matter too much, they simply need to clean up the title. I will say it's one issue that the title companies will pay off on if there was title insurance.?ÿ
