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Title & Boundary Dispute Law in Georgia

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.

It's usually possible, though not always easy, for neighbors to come to a resolution of these disputes on their own. If the neighbors happen to like one another, and the difference between the actual property lines and what they believed the property lines to be is very small (a foot or two, for example), they might simply decide to go on as they had before. This is certainly a desirable solution in the short term, since it saves everyone a great deal of time and energy. However, in the long term, this can cause problems, particularly if one neighbor decides they want to enforce the legal property lines down the road.

However, it's more common for the neighbor whose land is being encroached upon by the other neighbor to seek enforcement of the legal property lines. The other neighbor will almost certainly want to use the property as he had been, since enforcing the legal property lines would cause him to lose some of "his" land.

Title disputes in Augusta, Georgia, on the other hand, involve questions of ownership over an entire parcel of land. This confusion can sometimes 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, especially 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 Augusta, Georgia

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 generally 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

A court might do the opposite, and decide to enforce the property lines as they're drawn. This will necessarily benefit one neighbor and hurt the other. A court will probably do this if one neighbor knew that his land was encroaching onto another person's property, and actively tried to hide that fact from his neighbor. Obviously, such bad behavior shouldn't be rewarded. Conversely, if the neighbor whose land was being encroached upon knew about the discrepancy, and did nothing about it, the court will probably change the property lines to reflect this prior use, to prevent that neighbor from being rewarded for "sitting on his rights."

With title disputes, a court has to decide who owns a particular piece of land. There are many factors that a court will consider, and this decision is governed by some fairly complex laws in Augusta, Georgia.

In general, the person who first recorded the deed at the appropriate government office will be the one who the court deems to own the land, if they didn't have any reason to know about the existence of the other deed, or other sale, or whatever else gave rise to the title dispute.

What Can A Augusta, Georgia Attorney Do?

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

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Life in Augusta

Augusta, Georgia is a city consolidated with Richmond County, Georgia. This means that the government of the city and the county are one and the same. As of 2008, the Augusta-Richmond entity has a population of 195,000 people.

Augusta was founded in the colonial era, and was the second established town in what was, at the time, a British colony named Georgia.

Augusta, Georgia has recently seen an economic boom, thanks to a large concentration of businesses in the medical and biotech industries setting up shop there. It is home to the Medical College of Georgia, the state's only public medical school, and also offers a program in dentistry, graduate degrees in nursing, and others. This college attracts students from all over the country, increasing the local consumer base, and provides over 7,000 jobs.

Augusta is also home to Fort Gordon, an U.S. Army base that houses significant elements of the Army Signal Corps, and has about 30,000 occupants.

Needless to say, Augusta, Georgia lawyers need to be well-versed in several areas of law to stay competitive. The sheer diversity of industry and demographics in the area mean that there is almost certainly an Augusta, Georgia lawyer who is right for you.

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Augusta Boundary Dispute Lawyers and Augusta Title Attorneys

Title & Boundary Dispute Law in Georgia

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in Augusta, Georgia