Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Georgia

Re: Easement?? Please Help, How to get an easement?

I agree with Mr. Zito in most respects. This is a complicated situation that is going to require a LOT of investigation. You should contact a local attorney for a consultation.

Re: Easement?? Please Help, How to get an easement?

You are not going to like this, but here goes:

If the circumstances are as you describe them, you may have great difficulty compelling your neighbor to grant you an easement. Normally, if property owner A owns a piece of land that is TRULY "landlocked" (i.e. - NO access to roadway, other than through a neighbor "B"'s land) Owner "A" MAY be able to sue to compel Owner "B" to convey and easement, because such an easement would be "necessary" in order to enable owner "A" to reach her land.

In your case, however, you state that your property DOES have road frontage - that it is NOT truly "landlocked", and that, although it would be expensive for you to clear an access driveway across your own land to your own road frontage, it could, nevertheless, be done. Thus any easement through your NEIGHBOR'S land (such as the one you HAVE been using) would NOT be and easement of "necessity", but, rather and easement of "convenience" (because it would be more "convenient" for you to use your neighbor's land than to spend the money to clear a long and expensive access drive through you own land to your own road frontage.

Another solution that you may have is to try to claim that because you have been using the current drive (across your neighbor's land) "openly and notriously" (which means you were not doing it secretly, or under cover of darkness, but that everyone, including neighbor, had the opportunity FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS to see you using the drive as if it was your own) that such use effectively means that you have obtained actual TITLE to that property via process called "adverse possession".

If you wish to seek to use such a theory, you may be stymied by reason of the fact that you NOW KNOW that the property is NOT yours, and that you have actually communicated same to neighbor and requested that they sell you an easement, which request they denied.

You are in a bad situation. One alternative solution might be to find out from neighbor WHY they do not wish for you to sell land, and try to accomodate his concerns by placing restrictions on the FUTURE use of your land, which restrictions would comport with neighbor's wishes. Such restriction would "run with the land", and be binding on a future owner.

Good Luck...... Jim Zito

Lipshutz, Greenblatt & King

404-688-2300