Property lines/easements

[USAFpj]

No other parties use the road. My Uncle is a smart man, just low on time, so I go to my trusty source here at TBN! My recommendation is to just give the road to one sibling, and then that sibling would grant an easement legally on the deed/survey. Seems to be a long term treatment compared to dividing the road in half for both parties to use. Like you said, that may invite trouble for future generations.

 

[davrow]

Slightly different for me... not only in California but in two community associations (HOA). In one the HOA is limited in what it can own, so ALL the roads are owned by the adjacent landowners - right down the middle. With permanent easements on the road so anyone can travel on them. I own my half, but I have no control over it. In the other HOA the roads are all 'common property' and no part of them conveys with the title to my property.

I don't see any practical difference. As long as it is all legally defined and binding there should never be any issues.

 

[JSanders10]

No other parties use the road. My Uncle is a smart man, just low on time, so I go to my trusty source here at TBN! My recommendation is to just give the road to one sibling, and then that sibling would grant an easement legally on the deed/survey. Seems to be a long term treatment compared to dividing the road in half for both parties to use. Like you said, that may invite trouble for future generations.

Having dealt with something similar in the past few years, here in Alabama, we granted deeded access.

You really have two choices, give 25' of deeded easement to both, splitting the logging road down the middle, or give one owner slightly more with the entire road, and include an ironclad deaded access to the other acreage.

Personally, for keeping it all even, I would prefer the former.

 

[dodge man]

I'm a land surveyor and have done what you describe on several occasions. There is nothing wrong with dividing the property down the middle of the road and giving both parties the right to use it. It would probably need to be surveyed and located and shown on the survey. For example say the road runs north and south and the parcel on the right is called "tract A" on my plat and the parcel on the left is called "tract B'. I just put a note on my plat with a leader line pointing to the road and say something like "30 foot wide private ingress and egress easement for the benefit of both Tract A and Tract B". I then show the new boundary line going down the middle of the road and a dashed line 15 feet either side of it. After that a lawyer will know the correct language to put in the deeds.

 

[dmccarty]

Our property lines go to the middle of the road but there is an easement over the road for the property owners.

If it was me, I would try everything I could to avoid an easement in the first place. Plenty of horror stories about easements on TBN. Avoid them if at all possible.

Later,
Dan

 

[houstonscott]

I would separate the road into a third property owned by both, keeping the home property lines separate. An agreement could then drawn up about how it will be maintained and access. HS

 

[Capricious]

Our property lines go to the middle of the road but there is an easement over the road for the property owners.

If it was me, I would try everything I could to avoid an easement in the first place. Plenty of horror stories about easements on TBN. Avoid them if at all possible.

Later,
Dan

The problems are with improperly done easements. One never hears about the (literally) millions of properly-done easements where there is never a problem.

I have one parcel where 30 feet ( or 40 feet, depending upon which piece of paper you are reading) along one boundary is easement for a county road. It is no problem.

As before, I would suggest thinking into the future: allow for the running of utility lines, allow for the further subdividing of the parcels, and make the easement wide-enough for
the county to accept it as a county road at some point in the future.

Just because there is a 50 foot easement does not mean that the road has to be maintained at 50 feet wide now.

 

[Capricious]

I would separate the road into a third property owned by both, keeping the home property lines separate. An agreement could then drawn up about how it will be maintained and access. HS

Well, I would not do that. A extra deed and recording fee, if nothing else. I imagine extra surveying costs as well. And then how are the real estate taxes handled?

If two parties are going to have trouble with each other dealing with an easement splitting a boundary, they are certainly going to have trouble dealing
with a separate parcel of property jointly owned.

As I posted before, I have a property I intend to subdivide at some point, and the road will be a properly-recorded easement of 25 feet to either side of the
boundary, for a 50 foot wide right-of way, with provisions for utilities, and with the possibility of eventually transferring the easements to the county.

 

[JRobyn]

If I understand correctly, what you want to do is exactly the way my (and my in-law's) property is done in TN. We have a "common-use access easement" road that divides (runs between) our property and the adjacent landowners. When I sold a portion of my property to my in-laws, we made sure that just a little bit of their property line was also in the existing "common-use access easement". It is written into all three deeds.

How this happened is that originally, it was all one large parcel with the road running down the middle of it. When the earlier owner's heirs inherited and sub-divided it, they used the road as part of the boundary, and each new portion had the "common-use access easement" written into the deed.

It has worked terrific, except that the adjacent property owners (original heirs) are non-resident and don't participate at all in road maintenance as they are really supposed to. On the other hand, when I asked for their permission to run a water line down the middle of the road, and to install a gate and gate operator across the road, they had no objections. I suppose it might go badly for me if they should ever suddenly become cranky and try to dig up part of the waterline where it doesn't stay exactly in the middle of the road, or tear down the gate! I've given their whole family, and anyone else they have specified, access codes for the gate opener.

- Jay

 

[dmccarty]

The problems are with improperly done easements. One never hears about the (literally) millions of properly-done easements where there is never a problem.

...

We have a properly done easement. It is a PITA. Anytime you have more than one person/group/family trying to control/maintain land/road you are asking for problems. All of our neighbors get along, except one, and that one is a PITA and causes problems. Had similar problems in another subdivision were I owned land and I know of another place that had issues.

There are numerous posts on TBN over the years about easements. If anyone has not read MDBARB's odyssey, http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/rural-living/14251-help-i-need-legal-advice.html, tap a keg of beer, bring in a load of wood, and start reading. Freaking nightmare and he ain't alone. We have an easement and it is a necessary evil for many, including us. If I could avoid an easement, and it sounds like the OP can, I would do it in a heart beat.

• Who puts in the road or driveway?
• Who maintains the road or driveway?
• Who pays for the work?
• How often is the work done?
• When is the work done?
• How is money collected for the work?
• Who collects the money and disburses it?
• Blah Blah Blah

All of the above can be put into a properly done easement but what does one do when someone disagrees with said easement and/or decides to do there own thing? That is when the scat hit hits the fan and the fun starts. Been There, Done That and Bought the T Shirt. Twice.

Later,
Dan