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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 cause some very serious legal issues.

Ideally, the neighbors could just dismiss 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.

In addition to the boundary disputes mentioned above, land owners and buyers in Fresno, California should also be aware of the possibility of a title dispute. Rather than being a disagreement over the exact boundaries between two pieces of land, a title dispute is a conflict over who actually owns an entire plot of land. Uncertainty over ownership of land can come up more often than you might think, and is most often caused by a buyer's failure to correctly record a deed, or the accidental loss or destruction of a deed. Sometimes, however, these disputes can be more dishonest in origin: on occasion, unscrupulous sellers of land will attempt to sell the same parcel to more than one person. Obviously, once you've sold land to one person, you can't sell the same land to anyone else, as you no longer own it. These tricksters know this, but are attempting to gain a large amount of money through the multiple sales. Once this is done, they typically attempt to flee the state or country before the buyers discovery they've been duped. This leaves it up to the buyers to figure out amongst themselves who owns the land.

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in Fresno, California

One possible result of a boundary dispute is a court effectively re-drawing the boundaries to fit what the neighbors had perceived. This is most frequently done if the neighbors were aware for a long time of the "real" property lines, and didn't do anything about it. It also helps if the neighbor who is encroaching makes major improvements to the land, and enforcing the new property lines would place a major burden on him.

On the other hand, a court could determine to take the opposite approach, and order the neighbors to abide by the legal property lines. When deciding which course of action to take, courts consider many factors, but majority of them boil down to common-sense principles of fairness. For instance, if the owner of the land who was encroaching onto his neighbor's land knew of the encroachment, and hid this fact from the other neighbor (hoping to continue to use more land than he paid for), that will weigh heavily in favor of enforcing the legal property lines. On the other hand, if neither neighbor knew about the error, and it turns out that the actual property line goes through somebody's living room, a court likely won't enforce them.

When a title dispute comes up in Fresno, California, the court has to apply some pretty complex legal and equitable principles. These rules are sometimes very obscure, mainly because they can trace their origins back hundreds of years, to the common-law courts of England. However, a close examination of them reveals their basic goal: deciding ownership disputes based on longstanding conceptions of basic fairness.

Usually, the person who records the deed first will be the one who takes ownership. Of course, this will only be if they had no reason to know about the other deeds).

What Can A Fresno, California Attorney Do?

Real property disputes usually involve very old legal principles that can even confound lawyers who aren't experts in real estate law. For that reason, you should almost always hire an expert Fresno, California real estate attorney, who will assist you navigate these murky legal waters.

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Life in Fresno

Fresno is the seat of Fresno County, California and home to over 500,000 residents. As the largest city in the San Joaquin Valley, the Fresno Metropolitan area plays host to 1.2 million. Fresno is Spanish for ash tree. The ash tree's leaf is even featured on the City of Fresno flag. Many locals are work on large scale agricultural farms that produce many fruits and nuts distributed throughout the world. Community Medical Centers, the City of Fresno, Kaiser Permanente, and the Saint Agnes Medical Center are other major employers. Another major employer and attraction to Fresno is California State University, Fresno.

Fresno is host to a number of important Courts. The United States Courthouse for the Eastern District of California is located downtown and handles a number of Federal cases like Immigration issues. The Fresno County Court is responsible for many of the cases that arise in Fresno including Criminal cases like assault and DUI as well as Civil cases like personal injury. The Fifth Appellate District of the State of California Court of Appeals handles any criminal appeals. The San Joaquin College of Law is one of the local law schools serving potential Fresno lawyers.

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Fresno Boundary Dispute Lawyers and Fresno Title Attorneys

Title & Boundary Dispute Law in California

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in Fresno, California