Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Arizona

This is a complicated set of circumstances and facts and you did not provide certain critical facts which may affect your claims and rights. You should first review your purchase contract and what is stated about the water rights, and then review the preliminary title report that you should have been given to review and should show that there are water rights with the property. Then, I would look at the listing agreement with the broker, if the property was listed for sale, or any written documentation that the property was offered for sale with water rights. I would then file a claim with the title insurance company, the escrow company and the broker who represented the seller in your transaction. You should have recourse to the seller if you can prove he promised to deliver water rights. It is not the title insurance company's responsibility to make sure the agreement was signed, it was job of the seller to deliver what he promised, and if it was in the escrow instructions, it is the duty of the escrow agent to act for all parties to the transaction to be sure that all requirements of the purchase contract are met. Now, you have aclaim for damages. You can ask the new owner to agree to share water rights, however, that would seem to cost you money. There is much more that should be discussed with legal counsel.

Adding to what Mr. Scher wrote . . . you have also claims for breach of contract against anybody that signed the shared well agreement and thereafter failed to carry out the promises they made under that agreement.

Unfortunately, you probably have no claim against the new owner of the property with the well on it unless the shared well agreement was intended to run with the land and you can prove that the new owner knew about the unrecorded shared well agreement.