Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Georgia

When we bought our house it was for sale by owner. She gave us a sellars sheet that list all the things about the property. One quesion on the sheet was is there covenants on property and she checked I don't know.(We find out later that she new and thats whey they wanted to move because they did not want to follow covenants) we never really brought up that question. On our property there is a small studio house that was shown to us as "an studio apt" or a mother in laws house. We waited a few months before we decided to purchase house and in the mean time they listed the house through a realtor and then we saw the house come out the house for sale booklet (I saved a copy of this). It list our hosue and the 600 sq feet of apt or mothers in suite. So I trying to shorten the story, so we decided to purchase property and we were still able to buy from owner and not realtor. But she still got our realtor to help with the sellars side of it. She showed the house to us several times and we were talking to the owner and realtor about using the apt for maybe college student for extra income. (Nothing was ever said about covenants) Well at closing at a local lawyers office we signed all the documents and the deed and nothing was said about coventants. We were not given a copy of coventants.... Honestly if we would have known we probably would not have bought the house. After we moved in we did not rent out the little house for about 6 months. We were trying to get settled in. Well after we rented it out we got a visit from a neighbor saying that no one could live in house because our "covenant says that in our subdividion can not have more than 1 house on each 5 acre lot. First of all I did not know I was in a subdivision and we sure did not know of any covenants. We thought it was our property and we could do as we chose. We did not at the house it was already there when we purchased it. The neighbor preceded to give us a copy of these covenants (that we had never seen before). She said if we did not follow the covenants they we would have to go to court. We fussed back at them and threated them on some of there covenants that were not followed to a t. This happened about 6-8 months ago and nothing else has been said but what worries me is Down the road if we want to sell the house we have to disclose the covenant and the house is really usless if noone can live in it? Our house was appraised as that being liveable property. I don't think it would have appraised for what it did if it was useless. Shouldn't we have received these covenant papers at closing. Isn't that what we pay the closing attorney for? I'm sorry this is so long!! We do have a couple that live in the house now and nothing been said but I'm just wondering? Do you think we would have to get a lawyer to fight this. I'm just worried that it brings our property value down.

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