Monterey Park Title Lawyers | Title Attorneys in 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 cause some very serious legal issues.

Sometimes, neighbors will decide amongst themselves that the issue isn't worth fighting over, and will go on as they did before. This is especially likely if the neighbors are on good terms, and the difference between their use of the land, and the actual property lines, is small (say, a few feet or less). This is an ideal situation, at least in the short term. It can, nonetheless, cause problems in the future - preventing a neighbor from enforcing the actual property lines, if they suddenly have a reason to do so.

In these cases, what often happens is that the owner of the property which is truly larger than he initially believed (due to the property line not being where he thought it was) wants to make use of the further property, and eject his neighbor from it. The other neighbor, on the other hand, will want to keep using the land as before, to avoid having his property shrink.

Title disputes in Monterey Park, California, on the other hand, involve questions of ownership over an entire parcel of land. This confusion can occasionally arise from improperly recorded deeds, resulting in inadvertent (and, occasionally, deliberate) sales of the same parcel of land to multiple people. Obviously, each buyer wants to be the one who takes title, particularly if it seems unlikely that they'll be able to get their money back. This can lead to some very heated disputes.

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in Monterey Park, California

Courts have many tools at their disposal to resolve boundary disputes. One way is to just re-draw the property lines to reflect how the neighbors had been using the land before the discrepancy was discovered. This doesn't very change the position of either neighbor, and is sometimes the fairest result. This is most frequently done because the neighbors were both aware of the legal property lines, and that they differed from how they were using the land, and went on using the land anyway.

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 Monterey Park, California, the court has to apply some pretty difficult 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 Monterey Park, California Attorney Do?

Because of the high stakes, going it alone in a boundary or title dispute is rarely judicious. Therefore, it's almost always a good idea to get a good Monterey Park, California real estate attorney to help you with such legal problems.

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Life in Monterey Park

Monterey Park, California is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is about 10 miles to the east of Downtown Los Angeles, putting it well within the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It currently has a population of over 60,000 people.

Monterey Park, California was founded in the mid-1800s. It began to grow heavily in the 1970s, when large numbers of affluent Asian-American families began to move to the area. The city is sometimes nicknamed "Little Taipei," because of the large number of individuals of Taiwanese descent living in the city. In this time period, many businesses from Chinatown in Los Angeles began to open locations in Monterey Park, which provided a major boost to the local economy.

The economy of Monterey Park, California is based heavily on education and retail. The largest employer in the city is East Los Angeles College, part of California's community college system. This college employs nearly 2,000 people, and educates thousands of students every year, preparing many of them to go on to four-year universities. Some of these students go on to become successful Monterey Park, California attorneys.

If you are in need of legal advice in Monterey Park, California, there are plenty of lawyers in Monterey Park who can help you with whatever legal problem you might face.

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Monterey Park Boundary Dispute Lawyers and Monterey Park Title Attorneys

Title & Boundary Dispute Law in California

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in Monterey Park, California