 Adverse Possession and Selling a Home
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Tennessee - My sister and I are in the process of trying to sell a home we jointly own, left to us by our mother after her death in 1995, the home is located in TN.
We connected with some excellent buyers through our Realtor. They wanted to do a survey as a contingency of their purchase offer to ensure everything was in order with the property. However, much to all our surprises it was discovered that the property description from the deed did not match the property we had always understood we owned and with between my sister and I, my mother and my mother's estate have been paying taxes on for about 20 years.
The missing portion of property includes the entire front yard. And it has always been understood with my mother, my sister and I and even from what we can remember of the prior owner who is now also deceased that this was part of what was owned. However, from research it appears that an error was made somewhere in the early 1900s that skewed the description of the final tract or left it out all together. We have run out of resources and time to continue with the research; however, our attorney says this is no problem.
Of course the sale and even without the sale our future use of the property is drastically affected by this problem. We have secured an attorney, but do not have the finances to pursue this through a long and drawn out battle and would really like to solve this problem so that we do not lose the current buyer.
According to our research and that of the buyers surveyor, who has also surveyed most all of the ajoining properties surrounding the home. No one has any claim to this piece of land in any deed that can be found at the local courthouse. No one except for our family has ever used it during the time that it has seemingly been in our possession and it includes a workshop constructed by a prior owner that we have always used.
In the past several years no one has lived on the property, but my sister and I have taken time when possible to go down (we live in NC now) and mow and clean up the lawn and house including the aforementioned missing tract. We have also posted no trespassing signs to deter the neighbors who rent a property across the street from dumping trash which has been done several times and cleaned up by my sister and I several times and neighbor hood kids from raiding the property. We also have family who try and checkin on it whenever possible.
My question is this... We are running out of money and time to get this resolved. Our attorney said we would need to claim the property through adverse possession and said it would be $2500 to go to court plus possibly more. And that we would have to sue all ajoining property owners to have the property legally declared ours. We really don't like the idea of dragging the neighbors into court nor do we have the financial resources to pursue this route. We wanted to try and simply show the survey results to the neighbors and just get them to sign off that they do not have a claim to our front yard and show them that we are by no means attempting to take their property and then after gathering signatures have a new deed made and filed. What are our options? Does a judge have to approve a new deed? We want to make sure this is cleared up so that we can proceed with the sale as the extra cash would be helpful to both my sister and I. And we don't want the new buyer to have any problems once they take the deed.
Thanks for dealing with my being so verbose! We welcome any thoughts.  | 
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