El Cajon Boundary Dispute Lawyers and El Cajon Title Attorneys

Find the right Title & Boundary Dispute attorney in El Cajon, CA

Title & Boundary Dispute Law in California

Finding out that property lines are improperly drawn and learning that you have been partially occupying your neighbor's land, or vice versa, can create some fairly serious legal issues.

Ideally, the neighbors could just ignore the situation, and go on as they had before, effectively agreeing to change the property lines to reflect their past use. This doesn't always happen, however. Additionally, such a course of action is not free of issues, and could eventually result in ownership of the land legally changing to reflect the past use, even if one of the neighbors opposes this.

Consequently, neighbors more frequently end up in some type of legal dispute over whether and to what extent the property lines should be enforced. Obviously, when the property lines are changed, one neighbor wins, and the other loses. It should come as no surprise, then, that legal fights are often the result.

While the boundary disputes discussed above occur fairly regularly, they aren't the only type of land dispute that can happen in El Cajon, California. There are also title disputes. These disagreements arise when it isn't clear who owns an entire parcel of land. There are many reasons why such confusion might arise, but a common one is failure to properly record a deed, or subsequent loss of a deed by the recording office. While typically innocent in origin, these disputes can also be the product of fraud. Sometimes, a landowner will sell his land to more than one person, with each buyer assuming that they are the only buyer. Having "sold" his land multiple times, the fraudster presumably flees the jurisdiction with his ill-gotten gains. This leaves the buyers to figure out who truly owns the land that each of them thought they had just bought. Obviously, whoever loses this dispute will typically have to absorb the loss of the land's purchase price, if the fraudulent seller cannot be found.

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in El Cajon, California

There are many ways to resolve boundary disputes. One way is to change the legal property lines to reflect the use that the neighbors had been making of the land before the discrepancy was discovered. This is usually considered a sort of "neutral" result - nobody's situation changes. If both neighbors knew about the real boundaries for a very long time, and did nothing about it, a court may view this as them having acquiesced to the status quo, and decide that it would be unfair to force the neighbors to change their use of the land after such a long period of time. This might also be done if enforcing the property lines would place a very large burden on one neighbor, and re-drawing them to reflect their actual use would put a comparatively small burden on the other neighbor

However, a court might also enforce the legal property boundaries, especially if failing to do so would place a significant burden on the owner of the encroached-upon land. If the owner of the encroaching land knew of the encroachment, and concealed it from his neighbor, this fact would also weigh heavily in favor of enforcing the legal property lines.

With title disputes (as opposed to the boundary disputes discussed above), an El Cajon, California court has to determine who owns an entire parcel of land. There are some pretty complex legal issues involved here.

Without delving into the details too much, courts typically resolve title disputes by looking at who recorded the deed first, and whether or not that person had notice of any prior sales of the same land. To succeed in a dispute like this, a buyer will usually need to prove that they were the first to record their deed, and that they had no notice (or reason to know) of any prior conveyances of the same land.

What Can A El Cajon, California Attorney Do?

As you might have gathered, it's not uncommon for the legal issues governing boundary and title disputes to get very complicated. Moreover, any dispute that can affect one's use or ownership of land has very high stakes (land isn't typically cheap, after all). Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise that hiring a competent El Cajon, California real estate lawyer to help in situations like this is always a good idea.

Talk to a Real Estate Law Attorney now!

Life in El Cajon

El Cajon, California is a city in San Diego County. It has a population of just under 100,000 people.

El Cajon, California was formed from a land grant from the Mexican government in 1845, and was officially incorporated as a city in 1912.

El Cajon is located inland from San Diego, and as a result, its climate has more variation than San Diego from one extreme to another, but compared to most other places, its climate can be considered quite mild. Summers in El Cajon, California are quite warm, though it rarely gets extremely hot.

Like most places in California, El Cajon sports a large amount of ethnic and religious diversity. El Cajon, California is also home to a burgeoning art and culture district, including art galleries, and a strong commitment to public art.

If you are facing a legal issue in El Cajon, California, chances are good that there is a lawyer nearby who is capable of handling your problem, whatever it might be. El Cajon, California lawyers are always ready to meet the legal needs of their community. If you have any legal trouble whatsoever, no case is too big or too small for an El Cajon attorney.

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