Cedar City Boundary Dispute Lawyers and Cedar City Title Attorneys

Find the right Title & Boundary Dispute attorney in Cedar City, UT

Title & Boundary Dispute Law in Utah

There are times when neighbors will find themselves in a situation where how they've been using their land doesn't match up with the property boundaries that are on record. This can be a source of considerable conflict, as one might expect.

In these instances, neighbors usually have the option to resolve the dispute by themselves. If the neighbors are on amicable terms with each other, and the dispute is minor (for example, it only contains a difference of a couple feet), and enforcing the property lines would be a major inconvenience for one or both of the neighbors, they'll probably decide to just go on as they had before. This is a viable option, to be sure, but it's not a perfect one: if, sometime down the road, one of the neighbors wants to attempt to enforce the legal boundaries, they might find themselves unable to do so.

In these cases, what often happens is that the owner of the property which is really 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.

In addition to the boundary disputes mentioned above, land owners and buyers in Cedar City, Utah 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 dispute 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 normally 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 Cedar City, Utah

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 commonly 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.

In Cedar City, Utah courts have many options when it comes to resolving title disputes. However, these disputes are usually controlled by some fairly intricate (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.

Typically, 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 Cedar City, Utah Attorney Do?

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

Talk to a Real Estate Law Attorney now!

Life in Cedar City

Cedar City, Utah is a community of about 28,000 people located in Iron County.

Rock art dating from the years 1000 to 1300 AD has been found around Cedar City, indicating that humans have lived in the era since prehistory. The first Americans of European descent to settle the area were a group of Mormon pioneers, who arrived in 1851. For a brief period after this initial settlement, an ironworks operated in Cedar City, but closed in 1858. However, iron mining remained an important industry in Cedar City well into the late 20th Century.

In 1923, a railroad connection to the city was completed, allowing Cedar City, Utah to serve as a gateway for tourists visiting the area's several national parks, such as Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park. This lead to rapid growth of the city, because, during that time, Americans were beginning to see the value of preserving wilderness, and the number of visitors to national parks was skyrocketing.

Cedar City, Utah remains a major hub for visitors to these national parks, and other nearby points of interest, to this day.

Cedar City, Utah lawyers are well-equipped to handle a wide variety of legal problems that an ordinary person is likely to face. However, you shouldn't take that to indicate that any case is too big for the lawyers of Cedar City, Utah, either.

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