Legal rights of ways question

[Lisagrantb]

My wife inherited about 150 acres when her father passed away a couple years ago. About 20 years ago the property behind us was land locked and I'm not sure what or if any easement agreements were put in place. About 20 years ago a doctor purchased the place behind us as well as some property to the side of us and that gave the landowner road access and there is an existing road going into both pieces of property now. Up until this year an old family friend ran about 500 head on it and he has always going through our property to get to his and we had no problems because it was a scratch each other's back kind of arrangement. About 8 months ago the land owner told the rancher he had to get out even though he still had 2 years left on his contact. The rancher chose not to fight it and left. The owner has since rented the land to a farmer that they are friends with. The other day the farmer stopped by to talk to me and say hi and asked if he could bring some equipment in through our property and I said it would be ok but I told him that the gates going from our property to his was only a single gate and large equipment would not fit through it. He's had large equipment in before and it was brought in through their access road. I went on about my business and after a while a medium size tractor showed up and I talked to the operator and said it may not fit through the fence in the back and he said he would try. Well it fit through but he left the gate open, the cows were on the other side of the pasture and I was working on a fence and could keep an eye on it. About 2 hours later another larger tractor shows up and in a little while I look back there and they have brought a backhoe in and pulled the gate and H brace up and tossed them to the side and then they went on in and left it torn down. After about another hour a guy comes back and "fixes the gate" and still leaves the first gate open which was only about 50 feet away. I was mad really mad, about another hour goes by and the farmer shows up, I told him to not set foot on my property again to use his own entrance way. So for such a long story my question is, if there is an easement granting access to his property do I have to honor it if he has his own access now.

 

[greybeard]

About 2 hours later another larger tractor shows up and in a little while I look back there and they have brought a backhoe in and pulled the gate and H brace up and tossed them to the side and then they went on in and left it torn down.

YOUR fence & gate?
I'd probably be in jail ( or worse) if someone did that to one of my fences.
Here, the only easement that counts between 2 private landowners is if the easement is on the deed at county clerk's office.

 

[Lisagrantb]

It is the property line fence.

 

[ccr]

Could be prescriptive rights. A good land attorney may be needed.

 

[Lee VanRoss]

As I see it. Twenty years ago t;here was landlocked property behind you and access was needed to gain entrance to the property.
An Easement Agreement may or may not be extant but in any intent applies only to the landlocked property.
The landlocked property in question as well as additional property giving access to the landlocked property was purchased by new owner
rendering moot the need for any Easement Agreement to the landlocked property.
The aforementioned property was purchased approximately twenty years ago.
The permission given to the family friend to move cattle through your property is/was a gentleman's agreement and not based
on any Easement Agreement, extant or not.
What you do at this point is up to you.
Myself, I would document through photos and eye witnessses any and all damage done by the owner or anyone in their hire.
In as much as I have a very good relationship with the county sheriff I would inform him of my intent to permanetly close the
access as it exists today.
In as much as there is a road giving access to both properties it follows the legal need for access through you is no longer in question.

You might be able to get damages for the rearrangement of your fence but I would be inclined to let sleeping dogs lie.

 

[Ky hills]

We have the unfortunate situation of having a right of way passage through our farm. It is a legal right of way so we can't stop it. Most time it isn't a problem, as long as you have good neighbors. Several years ago we had some nuisances that lived there and they complained about everything, some of their relatives I believe even shot one of my calves.
We also have a landlocked 7 acre tract of land, that is completely useless to us, we pay taxes on it but have never seen it, but from a distance. It's grown up in trees, and the only possible access would be though an abandoned railroad. It's a situation that ties in the the old times topic, nobody in my family could ever understand why their grandparents sold some of their land and yet retained that part right in the middle, and it has been a source of contention/amusement for years as the remaining family all paid their part of the taxes and refused to cede anything to each other. Now it's all on me and I have no idea what to do with it, as the people joining it would not be interested in buying it, nor would they be likely to agree to a right of way easement.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Maybe it has family buried treasure!

 

[Silver]

Maybe it has family buried treasure!

Or skeletons!

 

[Ky hills]

Or skeletons!

Could be either knowing that branch of the family.

 

[bird dog]

Why did they not go in through their access way?

 

[Lisagrantb]

Thanks for the advice. I'm not trying to be an ass. I would even be ok for them to use our land for trucks, smallish tractors and equipment but he is going to grow beans and that means many 100,000# loads of grain going across my culverts and road and he said he eventually wants to grow rice and that means really big earth moving equipment coming in because he has to level the land before he can grow rice.

 

[Lisagrantb]

Oh yea, I have documented everything, have very good relations with the sheriff, heck the sheriffs main man lives just up the road and I give him hay for his horse and I've already fixed the fence by running barbed wire and eliminated the gate that they ripped up

 

[Lisagrantb]

Why did they not go in through their access way?

Because it's shorter and more convenient to go through mine

 

[kenny thomas]

We have the unfortunate situation of having a right of way passage through our farm. It is a legal right of way so we can't stop it. Most time it isn't a problem, as long as you have good neighbors. Several years ago we had some nuisances that lived there and they complained about everything, some of their relatives I believe even shot one of my calves.
We also have a landlocked 7 acre tract of land, that is completely useless to us, we pay taxes on it but have never seen it, but from a distance. It's grown up in trees, and the only possible access would be though an abandoned railroad. It's a situation that ties in the the old times topic, nobody in my family could ever understand why their grandparents sold some of their land and yet retained that part right in the middle, and it has been a source of contention/amusement for years as the remaining family all paid their part of the taxes and refused to cede anything to each other. Now it's all on me and I have no idea what to do with it, as the people joining it would not be interested in buying it, nor would they be likely to agree to a right of way easement.

How much will you take for it? I'm a gambler.

 

[wbvs58]

Do you not have internet based mapping that is managed by the local authorities? We have Qld Globe for our state here, it is based on Google Earth I think and you can bring it up as satellite photos or contours as in a topographic map. I can add layers or remove as I please. I can bring up all my parcels of land and it will show all the road reserves whether they are developed or not, also registered easements can be brought up, anything I wish to show I can access. I would assume you have similar so might be worth a search.
I have a landlocked 650 acres of scrub that is an old tin mine, I have been using it for about 12 years but bought it about 2.5 years ago. The previous owner had a gentlemans agreement with the owners of a parcel of land between my home property and the tin mine and I still use that access now with their blessings as I lease their land also. I do have legal access to the tin mine through the back of my place via a road reserve that transects the land in the middle. It is a pretty rough track over rocky hills but it is there if I need it.

Ken

 

[sstterry]

You need to talk to a local real estate attorney. Easements are very fact-specific and vary wildly from state to state and fact pattern to fact pattern. Anything anyone on here tells you will be just a guess. However. any easement does not give him the right to tear down your gates or leave them open. Where are you located?

 

[BFE]

Thanks for the advice. I'm not trying to be an ass. I would even be ok for them to use our land for trucks, smallish tractors and equipment but he is going to grow beans and that means many 100,000# loads of grain going across my culverts and road and he said he eventually wants to grow rice and that means really big earth moving equipment coming in because he has to level the land before he can grow rice.

You've already went above and beyond in the "not being an ass" department. If it were me, they were done the minute they left the gate open. It will only get worse the longer it goes. No one out there wants to be a good neighbor more than me, but like making sow's ears into silk purses, they've already shown their level of consideration for you. Unfortunately, a lot of big operators are that way.

 

[Ky hills]

You need to talk to a local real estate attorney. Easements are very fact-specific and vary wildly from state to state and fact pattern to fact pattern. Anything anyone on here tells you will be just a guess. However. any easement does not give him the right to tear down your gates or leave them open. Where are you located?

ssterry is right, this is definitely a subject for legal advisement. The easement that we have through our property is specific. Over time when good neighbors were there my parents let them put in cattle guards which were not installed properly thus being bad for us. We tried going back with gates but that did not work well either. I have in recent years had fences built along both sides of it to both keep our cattle off of the road and to keep the peace. These right of way situations are not ideal and you need to know where both parties stand from a legal perspective.

 

[Lisagrantb]

I'm around natchitoches Louisiana so there is Napoleanic law to deal with. I'll check the mapping thing out but I've never heard about that.

 

[sstterry]

LA recognizes "Servitude" Easements. However, any easement should be or record somewhere. Most Register's offices are online now and you may be able to run a quick search to see if anything is on file.