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Old 03-12-2015, 04:09 PM
 
Location: Londonderry, NH
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Thank you for your comments and valuable lesson on purchasing real estate in Wyoming and for that matter anywhere else. Knowing exactly what you are buying is absolutely necessary. Thank you.
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Old 03-13-2015, 09:02 PM
 
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Originally Posted by GregW View Post
Thank you for your comments and valuable lesson on purchasing real estate in Wyoming and for that matter anywhere else. Knowing exactly what you are buying is absolutely necessary. Thank you.
Sunspirit is still in some level of denial. The case is as he said. Overall not very interesting and pretty esoteric. But the Wyoming Supreme Court clearly used it as a vehicle to educate all about the nature of the Wyoming law.

The stuff about road cost is all nonsense. The road cost the same whether it is on owned property or easement property or government property. The point being made is that a landowner cannot sock it to a landlocked owner.

Water is standard western water law. The water goes to those who use it first...not to those through whose property it flows. Very different than the east. The state does not generally claim to own it but holds it in trust for the people. For instance there is generally a rule that if you don't take your water for a specific period you lose the rights to it. So you own the water...but only as long as you constructively use it. And if water should become scarce some holders of rights can be deprived of use.

As to real estate agents and misinforming buyers ...mostly silliness. Now there may be clients dumb enough to purchase a property without clear understanding of the water and access rights. But, in the west, you really have to be pretty stupid to do that. In the west the first thing you get clear is the water...even before the land. And it is very easy for any buyer to cover himself. Simply right down what the seller is offering and have him sign it. Simplest technique in the world. And if he won't....get real cautious.
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Old 03-14-2015, 12:27 AM
 
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Originally Posted by lvoc View Post
Sunspirit is still in some level of denial. The case is as he said. Overall not very interesting and pretty esoteric. But the Wyoming Supreme Court clearly used it as a vehicle to educate all about the nature of the Wyoming law.

OK, you call it "denial".

But I'll suggest to this forum that another aspect of this case is the abuse of a property owner by another through the court system.

The landlocked property owner brought a suit against the non-adjacent neighbor, which most likely cost them a substantial amount of money in legal fees to defend their position. But at the time, the landlocked property owner did not have any access through the BLM land to their neighbor's property.

In my view, that's putting the cart before the horse with an unreasonable financial burden upon the neighbor.

If the landlocked party had gone through all the hoops and been successful in obtaining an easement/access from the BLM, then the adjacent landowner would be the blockage to the public road. But absent that BLM access, the whole case was a moot point and an unreasonable exercise in legal time and expense.

As stated by the court, they had no jurisdiction over the BLM/fed to allow the landlocked party any access. And, in my experience in Colorado BLM landlocked private inholdings, the BLM can be very reluctant to grant that access. It's been the stuff of court battles there a number of times and the BLM had no cause to reverse their decision. Such inholding properties have a history of being orphaned and the folk that have bought them have frequently done so with an attitude that they were going to show the BLM "who's boss". OTOH, the BLM has been more responsive to other pressures and land use groups than one sole inholding owner.

I have more than a passing familiarity with such situations through a former BIL who bought such an inholding property thinking that he'd have ready access via his Robinson R44 helicopter from another property he owned outside the BLM managed land. He built a pad in a clearing he'd created, and that brought down the wrath of several enviro groups protesting the damage (on his private property) to the forest, the views, and the noise pollution and potential safety issues to the forest wildlife and human users. In response to the complaints, the BLM denied him the use of his helicopter pad. His only other access was via horseback or to hike in. The case was protracted for some years ... unfortunately, he passed away in a crash in AK in inclement flight conditions.

As well, IIRC, there's a current ongoing case in Colorado where a family has recently been ordered by the BLM to not use a BLM road that was the historic access to their family cabin in the Breckenridge area. It got written up in the Denver Post, with a very sympathetic view about how the family had used the place for years for gatherings and was a very low-impact cabin nestled in the woods not terribly far away from their other public road accessible cabin in the mountains. Nevertheless, recent action by the Fed closed the road to public use and the family now cannot get to their inholding cabin, even after all those years of their use. The Fed has been closing a lot of public use roads throughout the West for years, but most recently under the current administration under the guise of land preservation and preventing abuse by motor vehicle operators (noise, pollution, too much ready access for the purists who only hike in, etc, with a higher and better appreciation than the heathens with UTV's or off-road capable vehicles).

I'd be interested to know if the landlocked property owner in the case Ivoc cited did receive an easement permission from the BLM so that they could perfect the access to their property in accordance with the court order re the private landholder.


The stuff about road cost is all nonsense. The road cost the same whether it is on owned property or easement property or government property. The point being made is that a landowner cannot sock it to a landlocked owner.

Now you're asserting that the costs of the road granted an easement by the court in an adverse action must be borne by the landowner whose property the road crosses?

I'd call BS on that.

You're obviously not familiar at all with what constitutes a road, nor the costs of creating same across what may be some difficult terrain ... no matter who owns the land.

There are standards to which a road may be reasonably required to be built in order to minimize environmental impact, load carrying capacity, the ability to plow it in inclement conditions, etc. Passage via a jeep trail or two-track path across another person's property may not necessarily be adequate or safe for the landlocked party to access their place.

I have a close friend who encountered such a situation in Pecos, NM. His property has a lot of steep vertical terrain across his 6 sections to allow access from the county road to the next ranch over from his. A prescriptive easement, and perhaps a verbal agreement to access that next ranch was allegedly given by his grandfather to a neighbor whose best access to a public paved road was through the first ranch. For many years, it was nothing more than a two-track best accessed by a dirt motorcycle, horse, or a old Dodge PowerWagon (or similar ex military off-road capable vehicles) in favorable weather conditions. In due course, the adjacent property was divided among the surviving family members. One lady family member refused to drive a suitable heavy duty off-road vehicle as being too inconvenient for her travel from Santa Fe to the Pecos area to her ranch holding. She slid off the two-track on a wet day (rain softened the clay soil) on my friend's property and was badly injured in the rolled-over vehicle as it tumbled down the hillside. Was she somewhat at fault for attempting the passage in clearly adverse conditions with an inappropriate vehicle? Yes. But she successfully sued my friend for her injuries and damages, loss of work (she was a real estate agent) and income ... all because the road accessing her property through my friend's place wasn't a "safe" road, with it's inadequate drainage, wet mud-slick surfaces without any road base or gravel, and hair-pin turns up a steep grade.

The upshot of the lawsuit was a protracted fight over the easement rights, if any. The adjacent family was able to prove up their prescriptive use, although they'd based it upon the family hearsay that "gramps had gotten permission from the prior owner back in the 1930's" and had been going across the property (on several different access two-tracks through the forested property rather than one clearly defined road) for decades. There was a lot of legal time spent on the difference between "use by permission of the owner" vs "use by easement". Ultimately, the ranch owner closed off all but one of their access gates to the county road and chained that up where it lead to a 25' wide plowed/graded/graveled road created at great expense. Each person granted use of the access has a lock in the chain and can only unlock their lock. So if anybody leaves the gate open, it's obvious whose lock was left open and responsible if anybody else gets access to the property. Unfortunately, this area was heavily damaged in the Viveash fire of a few years ago and the forest damage is substantial. The muddy areas are now worse than ever and access across the property is hazardous in all but the best of weather conditions.


Water is standard western water law. The water goes to those who use it first...not to those through whose property it flows. Very different than the east. The state does not generally claim to own it but holds it in trust for the people.

Sorry, but your knowledge of Wyoming Water Law is painfully ignorant. The statutes are specific that all water in Wyoming, be it surface or groundwater, is owned by the state.

I quote from Chapter 3, "water rights; administration and control" from the Wyoming Statutes: "Water always being the property of the state, rights to its use shall attach to the land for irrigation, or to such other purposes or object for which acquired in accordance with the beneficial use made for which the right receives public recognition ...."

and, FWIW, WY water law is quite different than Colorado water law. While it's safe to characterize western water law as quite different than the east (where it's a riparian climate), it's a fallacy to generalize that all western water law is the same. It's not. One such major difference is that in Wyoming, the water right attaches to the land, while in Colorado, a water right is an independent item and may be sold, loaned, rented, borrowed or otherwise transferred to another user for their purposes. In Wyoming, the water can only be used at a specific location for the specified/permitted uses and if the water isn't used to that purpose, it must be left in the source for the next water right holder in line to use or not as they see fit. Such is the making of a lot of Colorado farmland being "dried up" these days as municipalities purchase water rights from farmers, while in Wyoming the water cannot be separated from the land with the rights to it.



For instance there is generally a rule that if you don't take your water for a specific period you lose the rights to it. So you own the water...but only as long as you constructively use it. And if water should become scarce some holders of rights can be deprived of use.

The process of abandonment in Wyoming is predicated upon non-use for many years, but the appropriator has a lot of leeway in bringing their water right back up to currency before it can be declared by the State Engineer as an abandoned right. A key feature of maintaining the water right is simply opening the headgate at the point of diversion and documenting that the water has been taken. It is not required to show that the water has been put to beneficial use via delivery to the point of use. Please note that until the water actually reaches my property line, even though it's passed my headgate and is in my ditch, it is still the property of the State of Wyoming. Proving a "constructive use" is not a requirement of satisfying one's use of a water right for each year; in fact, in some years, there may not be enough water available during an irrigation season at my point of diversion from the source to be sufficient to reach my land miles away via the ditch that it is adjudicated to irrigate. But I do not lose my water right because the water didn't reach my land; it's an important distinction between a water right and functionally available water which may not exist in an irrigation year.

As water has been scarce in much of SE WY for many years, it's more than a topic of passing interest. I happen to own a senior "adjudicated 1886 territorial irrigation water right" which pre-dates Wyoming statehood. There are only a couple of water right holders senior to mine on the source, and I've had to put a "call" in for my water a number of times through recent years against the junior water right holders upstream from my point of diversion.

More to the point, of recent legal wranglings down at the State Engineer's office, is that they are now in discussions of how to allocate the oversubscribed water rights in SE Wyoming. My understanding is that they are trying to come up with a plan to "equitably" award the water available, and are planning on cutting back the CFS numbers per water right holder rather than adhering to the "first in use, first in right" historic policy and statutes. It remains to be seen how this ruling will be finalized, but if I'm cut back on my CFS, I might as well shut down my irrigation from that source. While there are more highly efficient means of applying the water to the field crops, it comes at a cost which would take me a couple of lifetimes to payback. I'm not a casual observer of this ongoing process, I'm actively involved at several levels with everybody from NRCS (who offered to put my ditch into a pipe from point of diversion to my property with a matching grant years ago, my share was "only" $500,000 after they'd done the survey and engineered the pipeline) to the Gov's office to dealing with several at the State Engineer's office on this program.



As to real estate agents and misinforming buyers ...mostly silliness. Now there may be clients dumb enough to purchase a property without clear understanding of the water and access rights.

Again, I'm getting a real laugh out of this line from you.

There's literally hundreds of threads on the Wyoming and Colorado C-D forums about folk who haven't performed their due diligence about what they were purchasing. Some wrote about these problems before buying, but most of them post after having made the property purchase. Some of the issues were water, some were access rights or functional access, some were mineral/oil gas issues and land development/use problems, and ....

Still others are folk who have bought residential properties in Wyoming where the drought situation of recent years was severe enough that town municipal water supplies were drying or dried up.

You may label all of these folk as


But, in the west, you really have to be pretty stupid to do that.

I'm sure that many of those folk who have made bad assumptions about purchasing land or properties here in Wyoming sure appreciate your name calling here (sarc).

What I do know for sure, having extensively traveled Wyoming as a real estate investor, is that the ethics and performance levels of Wyoming real estate agents is not up to the standards of practice in many other regions of the USA. And while I've talked with a number of agents who've moved here and profess that they will clean up the act and act responsibly and ethically, I've seen all of those either fall into the same practices of their competitors or move away when they couldn't make a living here.

The only real estate market I've seen in Wyoming where agents are performing to a higher level is in Jackson. I believe that has a lot to do with the high price points there and so many folk with experience in real estate agents from other areas demanding and expecting that higher level of performance.

OTOH, I've related but a few of the interesting experiences I've had with real estate agents around Wyoming on the C-D threads. Stuff like taking me to a remote property and "forgetting" the keys to the residence and structures, but wanting me to sign an offer at the site without being able to tour the property. Or taking me to a rural property (a 150 mile round-trip) and not disclosing that the contract price was a short sale which had been turned down several times previously with qualified buyers by the lenders. Or that a domestic well wasn't producing anymore and the 2,000 gallon concrete cistern (needed because the well, at best, produced 1/2 gallon per minute on a good day) was cracked and not holding water any more. Or that a domestic well was contaminated with nitrates beyond use, but was given a "standard" well water test report which didn't cover this item. Or that a irrigation well serving a 7-tower pivot had never been permitted and there was no water right to transfer to the new owner of the property. Or a real estate agent telling me that I had an access easement to a parcel but no such easement was recorded and that property owner wasn't happy about the real estate agent saying that it was OK to cross his land; the reason that that access was being used was because the developer/real estate agent had subdivided other parcels and the prior access road was through the middle of the new homesite. Or a real estate agency where when you'd inquire about a specific type of property you were looking for in the area simply tossed you their loose leaf binder of the properties they had listed for sale ... and it was clearly an imposition upon them to have to remove their boots on their desk in your face to have to reach over and get the binder ... and tell you to look through there and see if anything was of interest to you.

And many other similar levels of non-performance and outright misrepresentation which are clearly not the ethical or performance standard of other real estate practices around the country. Keep in mind that I'm only one buyer that these folk deal with, and I doubt that they single me out for different treatment than anybody else that comes through their doors.

On a more personal, immediate level ... I have a bunch of friends (4 local families) that are now in the process of relocating from the Cheyenne area to NE Wyoming. They've been trying for months to locate properties in that area; some are financially quite capable and some are depending upon their church to support their move. Based upon their reports, they've not yet encountered a real estate agent who has been upfront with them about water quality or water availability in the area. It's typical to see 400'-600' deep wells needed to provide a minimal domestic use well there, and there's serious water quality issues there. Fortunately, I have contacts in the State Engineer's office who have tipped me off to the water issues up that way and I've been able to advise my friends about these concerns ... so they now know to ask about these issues. So far, they've not gotten straight answers from any of the real estate agents they've dealt with and they're having to tell the agents upfront that water problems will be a deal breaker. The agents have been "shocked" to have a buyer dictate to them that they will be held accountable for any misrepresentations or omissions in this regard ... and the folks are primarily looking at mid-6 figure properties, not an insignificant purchase price point for the area.



In the west the first thing you get clear is the water...even before the land. And it is very easy for any buyer to cover himself. Simply right down what the seller is offering and have him sign it. Simplest technique in the world. And if he won't....get real cautious.
While I agree that asking the questions and getting the answers in writing could be a safety tactic, I can tell you from practical experience that few, if any, real estate agents in this area will play into this with anything that can come back to haunt them. If you're too difficult of a buyer for their tastes or tactics, they will walk away from you as a client. There's too many easy, "found money" sales with ignorant buyers who will fall for their misrepresentations or ethical lapses that they don't need to deal with you.

Part of the key to buying real estate here in Wyoming is to know that you simply must perform your own due diligence, and do so in a manner that doesn't offend the real estate agent/agency. But it's essential to get your own appraisals (Wyoming is a non-reporting state!) rather than rely upon an agent's representations of comp's, get your own survey of the property, investigate your water rights at the State Engineer's office, check your zoning at the Z&P department, verify your fire department coverage, verify that your insurance company/agent will cover a property, verify the code compliance of a structure (if any, or if any needed), and so forth.

In my view, there's no need to wait until a Wyoming real estate agent gives you cause to "get real cautious". You should do so at the very beginning of any interest on your part on a property here, especially in those rural areas where building codes aren't required or haven't been enforced.

Last edited by sunsprit; 03-14-2015 at 01:02 AM..
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Old 03-14-2015, 01:31 AM
 
Location: Cabin Creek
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any development in Lincoln Country requires roads to meet County specifications. So if in time it becomes a County road , taxes won't be spent to bring it up to specifications.
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Old 03-14-2015, 11:13 AM
 
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Jody brings up an interesting aspect of this whole thread ...

the required standards to which a "road" must be built.

Case in point, my neighbor who is developing/subdividing this old 7-section ranch property from which my farm/ranch and adjacent parcels were parceled out ....

When he subdivided that nearby section into 18 ea 40 acre parcels, he built those two roads I described. Since he wanted them to be maintained/plowed by the county, he built them to the standards required. Hence the expense he went to properly grade, size, crown, barrow pit, and put in road base/gravel and compaction to the standards.

But the county acceptance process is more than simply developing a subdivision with roads built to the standard that the county requires. The county has to "accept" the roads into the system. To date, the developer has been told that the county "doesn't have the funds to maintain these roads, so it can only put their acceptance into the cue hopper and wait". In the meantime, all road maintenance is performed on a voluntary basis by the parcel owners there, and none has anything larger than a 25HP tractor and 5' box scraper, small loader, or blade to do so. Even with the limited amount of traffic on those interior roads, the roadway appears to get badly rutted and requires box scraping a time or two even in the summer months.

It's a big drawback for the residents of those parcels, now about 10 families with school-age kids. They have to do their own wintertime plowing from their parcel access to the development road and then to the county road where the school bus route is located. Unfortunately for them, the route of the road(s) is through a number of undulations which historically drift in 4'-8' deep and a couple hundred yards in length even when a snowstorm drops only a couple of inches of snow; the adjacent ground will continue to drift snow across the road for days after the storm front passage.

This takes a lot more than a bumper mounted snowplow on a 4x4 pick up truck to clear; it takes a bulldozer or road grader to clear out. With the local winds and the orientation of the road, it can require clearing out multiple times per day. Even the nearby county road is frequently impassable between the two development roads, but now that it's on the school bus route, the county does run a road grader down it in the storms and aftermath drifts. Previously, they didn't do so and it wasn't unusual for the USPS to not provide mail delivery on the road south of us when that county road was blocked with the big drifts.

The residents of the subdivision typically park their personal vehicles along the county road frontage during these inclement conditions and use them and/or snowmobiles to access their properties, parking their cars/trucks on the county road frontage overnight. The older kids (some as young as 10 years old) typically drive or snowmobile their younger siblings or neighbors into the subdivision roads, but even then it's not sufficient to drop them off at their driveways due to the drifts. The kids need to be dropped off at their front doors, although a couple of families provide their kids a snowmobile or UTV to go from the subdivision road to their house, a matter of a 1/4-1/3 mile for some. A couple of the families have given up on the public school access in the winter and now homeschool instead.

So let's now take this back to that "landlocked property owner" awarded an easement access across his not-adjacent neighbor's land from the BLM property, as follows:

To what standard and access maintenance must that road be built?

Does that landlocked property owner intend to live there during the school year (or a portion thereof) with children of school age who must have access to the school bus or transportation to school?

Is it even possible that Ivoc can grasp the magnitude of the expense and burden upon the other property owner to install and maintain inclement weather road access and safety which otherwise didn't present in the course of operating their property?

Last edited by sunsprit; 03-14-2015 at 11:22 AM..
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Old 03-14-2015, 01:44 PM
 
12,973 posts, read 15,729,762 times
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Originally Posted by sunsprit View Post
Jody brings up an interesting aspect of this whole thread ...

the required standards to which a "road" must be built.

Case in point, my neighbor who is developing/subdividing this old 7-section ranch property from which my farm/ranch and adjacent parcels were parceled out ....

When he subdivided that nearby section into 18 ea 40 acre parcels, he built those two roads I described. Since he wanted them to be maintained/plowed by the county, he built them to the standards required. Hence the expense he went to properly grade, size, crown, barrow pit, and put in road base/gravel and compaction to the standards.

But the county acceptance process is more than simply developing a subdivision with roads built to the standard that the county requires. The county has to "accept" the roads into the system. To date, the developer has been told that the county "doesn't have the funds to maintain these roads, so it can only put their acceptance into the cue hopper and wait". In the meantime, all road maintenance is performed on a voluntary basis by the parcel owners there, and none has anything larger than a 25HP tractor and 5' box scraper, small loader, or blade to do so. Even with the limited amount of traffic on those interior roads, the roadway appears to get badly rutted and requires box scraping a time or two even in the summer months.

It's a big drawback for the residents of those parcels, now about 10 families with school-age kids. They have to do their own wintertime plowing from their parcel access to the development road and then to the county road where the school bus route is located. Unfortunately for them, the route of the road(s) is through a number of undulations which historically drift in 4'-8' deep and a couple hundred yards in length even when a snowstorm drops only a couple of inches of snow; the adjacent ground will continue to drift snow across the road for days after the storm front passage.

This takes a lot more than a bumper mounted snowplow on a 4x4 pick up truck to clear; it takes a bulldozer or road grader to clear out. With the local winds and the orientation of the road, it can require clearing out multiple times per day. Even the nearby county road is frequently impassable between the two development roads, but now that it's on the school bus route, the county does run a road grader down it in the storms and aftermath drifts. Previously, they didn't do so and it wasn't unusual for the USPS to not provide mail delivery on the road south of us when that county road was blocked with the big drifts.

The residents of the subdivision typically park their personal vehicles along the county road frontage during these inclement conditions and use them and/or snowmobiles to access their properties, parking their cars/trucks on the county road frontage overnight. The older kids (some as young as 10 years old) typically drive or snowmobile their younger siblings or neighbors into the subdivision roads, but even then it's not sufficient to drop them off at their driveways due to the drifts. The kids need to be dropped off at their front doors, although a couple of families provide their kids a snowmobile or UTV to go from the subdivision road to their house, a matter of a 1/4-1/3 mile for some. A couple of the families have given up on the public school access in the winter and now homeschool instead.

So let's now take this back to that "landlocked property owner" awarded an easement access across his not-adjacent neighbor's land from the BLM property, as follows:

To what standard and access maintenance must that road be built?

Does that landlocked property owner intend to live there during the school year (or a portion thereof) with children of school age who must have access to the school bus or transportation to school?

Is it even possible that Ivoc can grasp the magnitude of the expense and burden upon the other property owner to install and maintain inclement weather road access and safety which otherwise didn't present in the course of operating their property?
YOu simply seem unable to comprehend lvoc's point. The cost of the road is the same whether it runs on owned property, or easement property or government property. If you buy a piece of property without road access you have no right to be surprised by what the road costs.

And cost is an entirely different discussion than the right of access.
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Old 03-14-2015, 02:49 PM
 
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Originally Posted by lvoc View Post
YOu simply seem unable to comprehend lvoc's point. The cost of the road is the same whether it runs on owned property, or easement property or government property. If you buy a piece of property without road access you have no right to be surprised by what the road costs.


I understand full well your point.

The apparent problem here is that you don't seem to be able to comprehend that roads are built to different standards at entirely different costs of engineering, costs of construction, impairment of quiet enjoyment by a private property owner, and even costs of materials to construct the road.

There's more to putting a road in some places than simply saying "let's just run a blade across the pasture there and put some ranch gates in the perimeter or interior property fences and let that other guy come across our land.

And, depending upon the topography of that land, there may be EPA/DEQ/Water issues which present that require properly installed culverts so as to not alter or impair existing water drainage across the land.

In point of fact, the access road to my irrigation ditch for maintenance requires several culverts specifically for that purpose as it transits two miles of a couple sections of watershed land down to the creek.

The bottom line is that you wilfully persist in being remarkably stupid about the costs of compliance with a court ordered easement road.


And cost is an entirely different discussion than the right of access.

Sorry, but again you're totally WRONG.

Part and parcel of your cited access decision is an inclusion of the "reasonable" costs of the access to the landlocked parcel. It is as critical an issue as the access easement itself.

It's clearly a litigable issue as to what constitutes a "reasonable" cost of access.

Are you still asserting that these costs are to be borne by the easement ordered property owner to allow his landlocked neighbor access?

Moreover, who gets to decide the route of passage of the easement? is it strictly a shortest distance from A to B, or is it to the primary convenience of the landlocked party, or is it something that may work best for the burdened property owner, or some combination thereof? It's entirely possible that the shortest distance requires the most road construction to accomplish it's purpose, or perhaps results in the most inconvenience to the property owner's livestock or other operations. Again, it's all litigable and it all costs money to design, install, operate, and maintain.
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Old 03-14-2015, 04:04 PM
 
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Sorry, but again you're totally WRONG.

Part and parcel of your cited access decision is an inclusion of the "reasonable" costs of the access to the landlocked parcel. It is as critical an issue as the access easement itself.

It's clearly a litigable issue as to what constitutes a "reasonable" cost of access.

Are you still asserting that these costs are to be borne by the easement ordered property owner to allow his landlocked neighbor access?

Moreover, who gets to decide the route of passage of the easement? is it strictly a shortest distance from A to B, or is it to the primary convenience of the landlocked party, or is it something that may work best for the burdened property owner, or some combination thereof? It's entirely possible that the shortest distance requires the most road construction to accomplish it's purpose, or perhaps results in the most inconvenience to the property owner's livestock or other operations. Again, it's all litigable and it all costs money to design, install, operate, and maintain.
Where do you get these absurd ideas? Of course the one getting the easement pays for the road.

The route is the subject of negotiation at the county level.

But the cost is irrelevant to the requirement that the easement be given. And the cost would of course reflect whatever standard is required to be met. And I would think it might well include accommodations to the owner providing the easement.
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Old 03-14-2015, 07:07 PM
 
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Where do you get these absurd ideas? Of course the one getting the easement pays for the road.

Nowhere do I read in the cited court case an order that the "one getting the easement pays for the road".

What it does say a couple of times is: "“reason should prevail in the establishment of private roads” and the private road statutes were intended to provide “a readily available, economically affordable and time efficient method to obtain a means of access to property.”

What doesn't surface in such language is anything to address the maintenance, operations, or potential time loss or inconvenience to the property owner.

If you haven't had to manage your livestock through additional fences or other gates/crossings to utilize your land, you may not have an appreciation for the impact of an otherwise unneeded road across one's property. This can be a significant expense to an operation which presents every time the road must be crossed.


The route is the subject of negotiation at the county level.

a significant aspect of potential litigation. "my engineer says that the road should be over here and your engineer says it should be over there". Such litigation can be time consuming and costly ... as one in District Court right now over a proposed culvert and road crossing my irrigation ditch, I am more than briefly familiar with how these issues can become a big deal. In my case, the legal costs alone for each party have exceeded mid-5 figures and we're just now getting to the pre-trial conference phase of the dispute after 5 years of wrangling over this.

Meanwhile, the lawyers are projecting which college they'll be sending their eldest children to when they graduate high school in a couple of years.


But the cost is irrelevant to the requirement that the easement be given.

Not according to the court ruling you cite. The cost must be "economically affordable" per their ruling. Please define what "economically affordable" means to the respective parties to such an easement.

And the cost would of course reflect whatever standard is required to be met.

And who specifies "whatever standard is required to be met"? The landowner? The easement holder? Who gets stuck with the responsibility and costs of maintaining the access in inclement conditions?

And I would think it might well include accommodations to the owner providing the easement.
I would certainly hope that there's a value placed upon the easement which is paid to the landowner. Every easement I've ever seen that was obtained always had a value received by each party to the agreement. But again, who determines what is a "reasonable cost" for such an exchange? Is there a prospective loss of land value to the property owner associated with a road crossing through their land? Is there a betterment to their property by having that road?


My point throughout is that sometimes court decisions can play havoc in the real world of common sense and prudent financial decisions. In the court case cited, my impression is that the plaintiff failed to exercise common sense and due diligence in establishing that he'd have access to his landlocked parcel before he purchased it. Given that the court case went to the levels it did, that must have been one heck of a valuable piece of property to justify such extended legal action on his part ... and a rather pristine piece of land owned by the defendant worth not having a road going through it.

Last edited by sunsprit; 03-14-2015 at 07:17 PM..
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Old 03-21-2015, 11:53 PM
 
32 posts, read 39,380 times
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I have lived in Wyoming for almost two decades. Ivoc has drawn so many similar yet disparate matters into this thread that it is very confusing to any outsiders reading it. In summary, the ranchers wrote the laws a century and a half ago. There are some statutes that compel access in some cases and other statutes that allow denial of access. Some property boundaries are specified by code to be easements and others that have no such encumbrance. Due diligence in such matters requires one to contact an attorney versed in such matters. Is it expensive Yes, but anything less is dereliction of duty by a prospective buyer. And i agree onthe comment that realtors are shysters. I did not get burned because i was wary of them and accepted anything they said as a damn lie before i bought.

pW
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