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Title & Boundary Dispute Law in New Jersey

Sometimes, neighbors will find out that their use of their land (or what they thought was their land) is not reflected in the actual property lines on record. Obviously, this can create a problem.

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. Furthermore, 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.

Thus, neighbors more commonly 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 Newark, New Jersey. 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 normally 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 really owns the land that each of them thought they had just bought. Obviously, whoever loses this dispute will normally 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 Newark, New Jersey

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 typically 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 Newark, New Jersey courts have many options when it comes to resolving title disputes. However, these disputes are usually governed by some fairly difficult (and old) legal principles. While they're typically 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 going into too much detail, the person who recorded their deed first will be the one who takes ownership, provided he or she did not know (or had no reason to know) of the existence of the other deed.

What Can A Newark, New Jersey Attorney Do?

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

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Life in Newark

Newark is a massive city. To give you an idea how massive, "The Brick City" is the largest in all of New Jersey and at a short distance of 8 miles from Manhattan, it's an ideal place for many New York professionals to call home. Port Newark is on Newark Bay along the Atlantic Ocean and is the largest port on the East Coast. The Port of Newark offers the most rail facilities, biggest cranes, and wide deep docking. It serves as the location for shipping nearly all New York containers. Newark's skyline shows what industrious city it is. Newark is home to the headquarters of Prudential Financial, Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey, New Jersey Transit, and the Public Service Enterprise Group PSEG are headquartered in downtown Newark.

Newark plays host to some of the nation's best universities and schools. The New Jersey Institute of Technology has educated NASA aerospace engineers to National Technical Medal of Technology winners. Rutgers University is located in Newark and has been consistently voted as one of the top business and graduate school in the United States. The city and local colleges draw outstanding talent for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center that is just adjacent to Military Park, a 6 acre green space with the well known "Wars of America" statue on display. You may also remember Brick City which was aired as a five part documentary on the Sundance Channel in 2009. The second installment comes in 2011. The documentary revolved around Newark's leaps and bounds to improve the safety and corruption of the past.

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Newark Boundary Dispute Lawyers and Newark Title Attorneys

Title & Boundary Dispute Law in New Jersey

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in Newark, New Jersey