Title & Boundary Dispute Law in Maine

If you discover that you and your neighbor's use of your respective properties do not reflect the legal property lines, this can create a problem.

It's typically 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 quite 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 Jay, Maine, 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 Jay, Maine

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

On the other hand, a court could decide 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 most of them boil down to common-sense principles of fairness. For example, 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 probably won't enforce them.

In Jay, Maine courts have many options when it comes to resolving title disputes. However, these disputes are usually governed by some fairly confusing (and old) legal principles. While they're usually built around policies that most people would find to be quite fair and reasonable, their application can be nearly impenetrable, even for some lawyers.

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 Jay, Maine Attorney Do?

The legal issues surrounding title and boundary disputes can get pretty intricate, and there are typically very high stakes involved (most people think their land is pretty important). For that reason, a good Jay, Maine real estate attorney will prove invaluable if such a dispute arises.