T
tammycon
Guest
Hello,
I am in Illinois and have a question about a driveway easement dispute. We purchased our home in 2000. It was originally a 2.5 acre tract of land. The owner split it into 2 separate lots, her's being 1 and 3/4 which is taken up by her home and a water retention pond that she put in. Our's being 1 3/4 acre which consists of a home and open land surrounding it. Because of the way the property needed to be split for zoning purposes the neighbor needed easment at one end of our property for a driveway. During closing our lawyer did not like the way the agreement was drawn up and requested it be redone. Her lawyer agreed that we needed to finish the closing and could complete the easement agreement at a later date. the driveway was already put in and we really have no problem with that and do not want to have any dispute with her over it being there. The problem comes in after closing. It turns out she is elderly and not fully in charge of her mental capacities. She sent us a certified letter a week after moving into our new home informing us we needed to remove our gutters or she was coming over to do it for us because the gutters were allowing water to run down the hill into "our" grove of pine trees and that is why one of the pine trees died. When we refused to live in a brand new home with no gutters she took it upon herself to hire a tree cutting company to come out and remove the grove of pine trees. I was luckily at home and caught them right before they started chopping ! We then had a problem with cutting our lawn along the edge of the driveway she called the police on us stating we were destroying the day lillies she planted there and that 10 ft on each side of the driveway along with the land she used for the actual driveway belongs to her (mind you this piece of property runs right through our yard) so we are not to be mowing it. After showing the officer our paperwork and land platt and visiting the county board just to make sure we are correct we now know she does not own any of our property she just has the right of egress.. My question is after this long drawn out story is can we legally get into any trouble because now 4 years later our real estate lawyer who handled the closing is sending us a copy of the drawn up easement agreement because she is screaming at her lawyer because it is not complete. Do we legally have to sign this document ? We really do not want to give this woman an inch and are more that happy to let her leave her driveway but do not want to sign any legal documents because she tends to believe that it gives he ownership of the land the driveway runs on and 10 feet to each side of it. We would appreciate any advice you could give us.
The original agreement was not signed at closing because the original land plat only showed the actual driveway with no easement on either side and for some reason they want a 10 ft easement on each side of the driveway which does show on a revised version done 3 months after we moved into the house.
I am in Illinois and have a question about a driveway easement dispute. We purchased our home in 2000. It was originally a 2.5 acre tract of land. The owner split it into 2 separate lots, her's being 1 and 3/4 which is taken up by her home and a water retention pond that she put in. Our's being 1 3/4 acre which consists of a home and open land surrounding it. Because of the way the property needed to be split for zoning purposes the neighbor needed easment at one end of our property for a driveway. During closing our lawyer did not like the way the agreement was drawn up and requested it be redone. Her lawyer agreed that we needed to finish the closing and could complete the easement agreement at a later date. the driveway was already put in and we really have no problem with that and do not want to have any dispute with her over it being there. The problem comes in after closing. It turns out she is elderly and not fully in charge of her mental capacities. She sent us a certified letter a week after moving into our new home informing us we needed to remove our gutters or she was coming over to do it for us because the gutters were allowing water to run down the hill into "our" grove of pine trees and that is why one of the pine trees died. When we refused to live in a brand new home with no gutters she took it upon herself to hire a tree cutting company to come out and remove the grove of pine trees. I was luckily at home and caught them right before they started chopping ! We then had a problem with cutting our lawn along the edge of the driveway she called the police on us stating we were destroying the day lillies she planted there and that 10 ft on each side of the driveway along with the land she used for the actual driveway belongs to her (mind you this piece of property runs right through our yard) so we are not to be mowing it. After showing the officer our paperwork and land platt and visiting the county board just to make sure we are correct we now know she does not own any of our property she just has the right of egress.. My question is after this long drawn out story is can we legally get into any trouble because now 4 years later our real estate lawyer who handled the closing is sending us a copy of the drawn up easement agreement because she is screaming at her lawyer because it is not complete. Do we legally have to sign this document ? We really do not want to give this woman an inch and are more that happy to let her leave her driveway but do not want to sign any legal documents because she tends to believe that it gives he ownership of the land the driveway runs on and 10 feet to each side of it. We would appreciate any advice you could give us.
The original agreement was not signed at closing because the original land plat only showed the actual driveway with no easement on either side and for some reason they want a 10 ft easement on each side of the driveway which does show on a revised version done 3 months after we moved into the house.