Your Input re: Easement Lawsuit

How about this....
The offer is ridiculous. Here's a counter-offer. The title company opens a new escrow (or whatever it's called in AZ) for an improved easement into your property. When the new easement is physically completed, per your specifications and per a licensed engineer's specifications, you will sign a deed to return the present easement to the property owner. All costs are to be paid by anybody else but you. Be sure another condition in the escrow is that you get a release from those performing the work so they cannot put a lien on your property for any work done on the new road. Until then, what's in writing is what's legal when it comes to real property and the current easement stays the same. That way you don't have to guess what it will cost to build a new easement. You take a risk of being short if you asked for a set amount and it turns out to be much more when the actual work is done.

They would be building me a new driveway to the nicest building spot on the property. Then sign off on the easement. This is what title companies are for and rarely do they have to pay out. They are a ripoff.Title searches are very easy. Anyone can do what they do-and obviously they blew it.

Not necessarily. Take mine for example, *none* of the easements on my property are recorded on title. They were not legally required to be there. Instead, they are located elsewhere in other government buildings, under different names and different descriptions. Unless you knew where to look and knew who had them, you would not ever find them.

Could you tell us more about this?

As a title attorney (dealing mainly with mineral interests), title searches are not always 'very easy'. Depends on the situation, and most importantly the state/county in question. The company I previously worked for was based in Oklahoma, and assumed that title in WV (where I work and reside) was as simple and cookie cutter as the title in Oklahoma was. They sent one of their attorneys here to do a 'simple' title that in Oklahoma would have taken a day or two, and after 3 weeks he gave up on it.

I agree that title searches are not necessarily simple. In WV just looking at the Deed Books is not enough. You also have to look at the Grantee and Grantor Index. That is complicated by the names in the index. If you fon't pick the right name or you miss it, you won't find the grantee or grantor record. Keep in mind that the clerk in the office may not have recorded it the way you think.

I have looked for a R/W that I knew to exist and never found it.

How do you Know it exists then?

Yea, I bought a property - farm land - that they said it had a utility easement (along the road, so already in the road easement) that was difficult to pin down, as it was worded with some difficulty - they noted it as such, and would take much more effort to track it down properly.

They also noted the whole property line on that side was difficult to pin down as it was not recorded real well. Again, would cost more to totally quantify.

I already knew of the property line issue, it affects my farm & a 40 year battle as it were - the records of a surveyor burned 40 years ago, and he moved the road location within an easement without notifying anyone else. when his building burned and he went out of business, the whole thing got just real messy over 20-40 feet.... I can live with it, as it's a know issue, no need to spend thousands when a tarred road already is there along that side anyhow - nothing is gonna change, anything I cost the previous owners they would just charge me more for anyhow, and paying the lawyers more to prove there is a difference of opinion between me, the previous owners, and the county really would not gain anything.

There are also environmental easements that are not recorded on deeds - EPA & USDA stuff in my state. And previous renter of land has oppertunity to rent it one more year if he wasn't terminated properly. Actually farmland leases, CRP easements, and so forth simply are, without being recorded on the deed. You can look for those in respective county/ state offices.

Many easements were given with a handshake & maybe a private document, not recorded, but they carry some weight in the courtroom. I own a and locked 5 acre woodlot, it has a handshake 'winter ag easemen' deal with it, I can cross fields in winter to get firewood. Oh how messy that would be if I bullied my way ino building a house back there...... I hav no plans, and call the current farm owner before parking my vehicle on his property so he knows what's what. He's a dairy farmer, I ask where I can drive so I don't harm his alfalfa fields in winter, and not when it's muddy. But I could be much more difficult to deal with, if I were so....

So title stuff is by no means easy - if it were, then you wouldn't need any lawyers involved....

--->Paul