Storage/Parking away from the house???
Long story but basically neighbor's new boyfriend has decided he needs the one foot (literally) that we are over the property line when parking our MH next to our house. Girlfriend (owner of house) te...
Forum Discussion
bigdogger wrote:X12AEsq wrote:No, you will not win a claim for prescriptive easement. Among the elements necessary to win such a claim would be the fact that rectifying any encroachment would create undo hardship on the party encroaching and that the encroachment has been ongoing for a long period of time. Obviously, since it is an RV it can easily be removed (unlike if you accidentally built a barn one foot onto their property) and the encroachment has not been ongoing, since the encroachment ends every time you take the RV on a trip.
Consult a local attorney. Possibilities: non-conforming use (parking the RV) may have begun prior to that zoning limitation, hence grandfathered; parking RV on neighbor's land with concurrence for 20 years may have created a permissive easement in your favor; depending on adverse possession statutes in your jurisdiction, it may actually have given you a colorable claim to ownership of that 1 foot strip.
Most people would not like losing part of their land. If it was the neighbor coming after you for a running foot of your land, most of us would fight it tooth and nail. The reason the neighbor doesn't want people encroaching on their property is immaterial. It's their property.
Every jurisdiction is different; that's why it's necessary to consult a local attorney. In Texas, for example, the elements of a prescriptive easement are "'the open, notorious, hostile, adverse, uninterrupted, exclusive and continuous use of the servient estate for a period of more than ten years, and the absence of any of these elements is fatal to the prescriptive claim.' Allen v. Allen, 280 S.W.3d 366, 377 (Tex.App.—Amarillo 2008, pet. denied); see also Brooks v. Jones, 578 S.W.2d 669, 673 (Tex. 1979) ('To obtain a prescriptive easement one must use someone else's land in a manner that is open, notorious, continuous, exclusive, and adverse for the requisite period of time.')" Wallace v. Kent County, 2013 Tex. App. LEXIS 10573, 10-11 (Tex. App. Amarillo Aug. 21, 2013)
This is not legal advice; once again, consult a local attorney.
