Nedd to settle land agreement

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What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
Virginia
We have been involve in a land dispute with family since 1988 (23 years of lawyer fees, sometimes 2 lawyers). We are down to the last step which is to have a cousin sign his part of an agreement that will settle the matter once and for all. He refused to pay his share of the survey fees so my lawyer is now holding that fee in trust and it will be paid as soon as he signs the paperwork to settle up a right away. We would like to take him to court to compel him to sign the paper work on the right-of-way. If we have to take this route, we would also like to have him pay the survey cost that he owes plus all court cost. What is the best way to proceed with this?

Our lawyer calls it a motion to compel but reading up on this it does not sound like what we need. After 23 years, we don't have a lot of confidence in our lawyer's ability to get this settled. The lawyer in charge has only had the case since 2005 when our previous lawyer died. He has done very little to help us get this settled with the exception of writing letters.

Thank you for any help you can give on this problem.

 

[154NH773]

We are down to the last step which is to have a cousin sign his part of an agreement that will settle the matter once and for all.

Has he been part of the negotiations all along? Has he indicated in the past that if the agreement is presented in its current form, that he would sign it?

It is difficult to understand the entire 23 years of litigation in your one paragraph, and impossible to determine what the court has said in the past, and why you are at the point you are at now.

There is a principle called "promissory estoppel" that might be applicable if you have been promised a conclusion that is now being withheld. My neighbor kept promising to sign a utility easement if I met certain conditions, then when the conditions were met, he added new conditions until my lawyer threatened to sue for "promissory estoppel". I'm not an expert on it, but it prompted the neighbor to sign.