If you are involved in a residential or commercial real estate
transaction, you should have a lawyer. If an LLC or Corporation
is purchasing real estate as the buyer the corporation must be
represented by an Attorney. In any event an individual or any
other party, should have an attorney to assist in selling or buying
the real estate. The Attorney should have experience and
knowledge on things to look for in the transaction in order to
protect your investment. There are a lot of contingencies and
complex concepts that Real Estate Brokers are not able to
provide assistance on. In Wisconsin Broken can represent both
sides and are really experts in marketing property, but not the
legal issues that come up. Although a broker may have certain
knowledge, they are not able to provide actual legal advice and
counsel by State Law.
When a person thinks of real estate they should also consider
other concepts. Adverse Possession allows you to claim land that
is not used or apparently abandoned by the Owner. If you use
land in an open, continuous, excluding, actual, and notorious
way with hostility i.e. with the desire to keep others off and a
willingness to claim ownership by fighting for it, you may need
a lawyer to establish ownership in a legal law suit. You should
explore this option of legally obtaining title to property, if you
are using property and under the belief that it is yours, until a
neighbor or other party comes along and claims to have a deed
showing ownership. This dispute may involve a permanent
building that was partially built over the actual property
boundary line. If this building was there for a long enough
period of time, adverse possession may be used as a defense in
the event that you are sued over the ownership of the property.
I also have had clients on several occasions need easements.
In one instance a client was threatened with a law suit for
correcting the drainage of a road on a vacant area of land. He
had an easement to use the road that was granted in his deed.
The land owner threatened to sue him for grading this road. I
found case law that stated my client in fact had a legal obligation
to maintain the easement. This case was sent to the owner's
lawyer and they dropped the case. This work resulted in my
client avoiding a lengthy and expensive law suit. If you have
been crossing a piece of property or using a road for years and
this use is cut off you may need to challenge the land owner and
allege that you had an easement by prescription. This is one
strategy in a shared driveway dispute or a boundary dispute that
you may find yourself in with a neighbor. The State of
Wisconsin Supreme Court just decided a case in 2010 called
Northrop v. Opperman, 325 Wis. 2d 445, which involved a
boundary dispute between two land owners that owned property
on either side of a County Road. For years the dividing line was
considered to be the road until a survey marker was found from
1911 which showed that one of the parties owned a strip of
property on the other side of the road, as the actual boundary
wasn't the road. This dispute was fought in Court nearly 100
years ago, and was still the subject of litigation in 2010.
The Supreme Court had to do an analysis of boundary
disputes, easements, and adverse possession. The Supreme
Court concluded that the proper way to establish the boundary
line was by the best evidence available, which was to determine
the boundary by the doctrine of common usage and
acquiescence. This case actually supports the legal notion that
if the boundary can't be determined and there was a fence that
everyone believed was the boundary for many years, it would
be that fence that could remain to be the boundary, despite one
of the parties coming up with a new survey or marker. This type
of dispute occurs regularly between neighbors.
Condemnation Proceedings involve Constitutional Rights to
own property. However the government has certain authority to
take property for the benefit of society and pay fair value for it.
These situations have had many issues litigated and it is very
important to have an attorney if you find yourself in such a
situation.