Boundary disputes and other property disputes make up a significant part of the Los Angeles court cases. There are a large number of people that seek the help of their Real Estate Attorney in Los Angeles to help them with multiple types of disputes that may come to the fore with their neighbors. There are a wide variety of cases that involve disputes between neighbors. In this blog, here is a list of a few of the legal principles that commonly apply in such cases.
1. Adverse Possession
This rule is one of the most unfair ones in the Los Angeles legal system and yet continues to be used in relation to property disputes. The rule basically states that for a trespasser to become the owner of a property that he/she doesn’t own, all they need to do is take an open property, use it in a way that is against how the owner would use it for a certain period of time and pay the property taxes for that property. This means that even though the person is a trespasser on land, application of this legal rule can allow them to take charge of the property.
2. Prescriptive Easement
This is another legal principle that is often used by Real estate attorneys in Los Angeles to allow the rights of the trespasser to be upheld. This order known as the prescriptive easement is an order that allows the trespasser to continue to use the property as they deem fit if it is consistent with their past use of the property. This legal principle is similar to the one mentioned above except that this principle does not require the trespasser to pay taxes. In cases where this principle applies, the owner of the property cannot block the trespasser’s use.
3. The Doctrine of an Agreed Boundary
There are likely to be issues between the neighbors in cases where there is little or no set boundary existing between the two neighboring lands. In cases like these, it is almost impossible to determine the correct boundaries of the land. Hence, in such cases, trespassers have argued that there is an applicability of an agreement between the two landowners as to the division of the boundaries.
This legal principle however has been reluctantly used by real estate attorneys in Los Angeles because of the severe complexities that exist within this piece of legislation. There are a large number of theories and conflicting cases of application of this principle and therefore most attorneys believe it is best to leave this principle alone.
The number of land disputes continues to increase with the growth in population.
