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Show HOME BUYER CLINIC By Fred B. Fromhold 1lF President-Elect American Land Title Association Drainage Dispute Real estate long has been regarded as one of man's most valuable possessions and conflict is not an unusual un-usual result when someone else claims an interest in property that an individual believes he owns outright. Sometimes a disagreement over property rights may pna m I become vio-j',' vio-j',' , lent, as hap-JT hap-JT ".' pened in an '. i eastern state r' y.f ' when an rZ- j owner bull- jii i ill dozed down Fromhold a neighbor's fence that he believed to be on his land. The neighbor responded by shooting at him with a rifle. More often, battles over property rights are fought in the legal arena. In one example, ex-ample, an adjoining property prop-erty owner claimed that a neighbor had stopped the flow of his drainage-causing drainage-causing water to back up and flood his basement. The complaining owner said he held an easement allowing his drainage across the neighbor's property, and contended that the neighbor had no right to stop the flow. An investigation confirmed con-firmed the validity of the easement, which had not been disclosed in a title search of public records prior to completion of the defendant neighbor's real estate es-tate purchase. Although the complaint was well founded, the owner holding the easement voluntarily solved the basic problem by installing his own drainage system. That still left the defendant defen-dant neighbor with the cost of legal fees incurred during the dispute. Since this neighbor was protected by owner's title insurance, the title company paid the fees under the policy to avert financial loss for its insured. Defending your property rights can be expensive even when successful, as this example ex-ample illustrates. Besides paying for the cost of defending de-fending against an attack on title as insured, owner's title insurance will either clear up title problems .or pay , valid claims. 1 t '.''.' f 1: |
