Posted on 06/02/2014 7:01:40 PM PDT by lyby
My mother and her sister inherited a substantial amount of land from my grandparents. My sister, her husband, my mother, my aunt, two of her sons, and I met with the attorneys last Friday. Despite my voiced disagreement, it was decided to pursue a "conservation easement" for the mountain land. My mother has been trying to divide the property with her sister for over 20 years, since my grandmother's death.
A gianormous gift to the greedy grifters who perch atop the uber-green-weenie enviro-whacko movement. And as soon as they take control of it, any promises made to you will be forgotten. They are parasites, and they will devour every bit of land they can.
A high school friend of mine and our family minister succinctly analyzed the situation for me: it’s the difference between democrats and republicans.
Saving that quote.
I believe it’s land you can’t use (except perhaps to gaze upon) but are obligated to pay taxes on.
The value of your property goes to zero.
My high school yearbook was named the “Kanawhan,” after the locks on the James River... Spelled differently than the inscription on your knife. But is it the same?
Actually, I did it as a joke for a thread back in 2006 when Freeper “Kanawa” killed a bear with a knife. Although, I believe my great-grandfather was living in, I think, Kanawah County, when he joined the Confederate army in 1861.
Look up Drakes Bay oysters and what a conservation easement did for their business.
Your family will regret this move. Totally.
I looked at buying a lot of land in the west. If it had a conservation easement, that meant I could build nothing on it. So I never bought a property with a conservation easement. Point is, think about potential future buyers. The easement will be limiting that pool.
Please take my advice, and get an attorney. And for further advice, make sure you get an attorney you can trust (which hopefully your gut instincts/trusted references/logic can tell you about that attorney). If something doesn’t make sense, research the applicable laws, ordinances, etc.
Otherwise, you will be steamrolled. It won’t matter if you are right, you will probably still lose unless you take the proper actions to protect your and your mother’s best interests.
There are a lot of vultures out there and in the case of family land, most of us are related to those vultures.
Also, find a realtor/appraiser in whom you have confidence to tell you the approximate value of your and your mother’s interest in the land, and weigh the amount of money you are willing to invest in any legal action to fight it against that amount.
Best of luck to you. I’m not an attorney, but I’ve had more than my fair share of horrible land disputes.
i would get on my knees and pray for guidance and perspective on this one. and i’d point them all to this link.
Thank you to each of you who have taken the time to reply to my inquiry! I am so grateful for the advice and the links to information... Ya’ll are the BEST!!!!
Bright young man. Good on you for doing something right.
Conservation easement... You pay for lower taxes.
google: Henry Lamb conservation easements for more info
http://americanpolicy.org/2013/07/29/conservation-easements-and-the-urge-to-rule/
Conservation Easements and the Urge to Rule
Again, I thank ya’ll for your invaluable input. Tomorrow I will re-read each of these posts and the links, which I have saved. Tomorrow will shed new light and insight on this situation (I just drove 10 hours back home to Alabama from home in Virginia). In HIS name be the glory. G’Night.
“I just do not want to see her taken advantage of... As I stated previously, I do not live there”
And that’s the problem we all face when our elderly parents live far away. We’d like to help them with a variety of issues and prevent them from being ripped off via a variety of schemes, but it’s very difficult to project any real influence from such a long distance, especially if there’s a passel of other relatives right on the spot already.
Your best bet is to quit objecting to the conservation easement idea, say you’ve thought about it carefully and realize it’s the right thing to do, that it solves a bunch of problems, back it wholeheartedly, express and interest in trying to help them get the best deal possible, and see if they’ll agree to involving you in the negotiations, work with their attorneys, etc. Of course you’d actually have to be willing to put substantial time into actually making yourself useful.
Hiring your own attorney would be EXTREMELY counterproductive unless such an attorney was to help YOU review the proposals and contracts, but that would be useful ONLY if they allow you to be involved in the negotiations in the first place!
Being so far away, your best bet might be to simply offer to go over the proposals BEFORE anything is signed with the intent of helping to make sure they get the best deal possible. You could THEN use your own attorney to help YOU. But you really need to bring something positive to the table that helps and DOES NOT impede their efforts at negotiations.
This sounds like very bad advice. I would not advise the OP to do what you suggested without independent legal counsel.
Just my opinion.
Good night.
Your family sounds a bit like my own; there are lost of people living an hour or more away in Fantasy-Land. I’ve seen this before and I’d concur with the advise given above. Hire good counsel of your own familiar with this subject. It sounds as though your family may be working to devalue or wipe out what may be a substantial asset.
There are many examples, but I'll give you one that will be familiar to many freepers. If you know the Antietam battlefield, you will know the Roulette farm, which fronts Bloody Lane. (For those who don't know the battle, this is smackdab in the middle of intense and prolonged fighting; we're not talking outlying ground here.) For years, the Roulette house and neighboring fields remained in private hands while the surrounding land was acquired for the park. Along the way, the Park Service acquired a conservation easement. Decades went by. Whether the farm remained in the same hands, I don't know. But as the story was told to me, eventually the current owners saw a chance to cash in, and huddled with a developer to subdivide the land and put up McMansions. These would presumably fetch a hefty price, located as they would have been right in the middle of a scenic park.
Fortunately the owners ran up against the easement. I'm told they tried to break the agreement, but they finally had to concede that the Park Service lawyers way back when had done their job well, and there weren't any loopholes. The land had to remain undeveloped. So they sold to the Park Service, and that tract has now been incorporated into the park. If you've not been to Antietam in some years, it's time to go back, as that ground in front of Bloody Lane that has always been fenced and posted is now open.
That's a dramatic example. One could come up with many more. The issues are site specific, but easements are a very good preservation tool. Whether the land is eventually acquired by a park is secondary; that may or may not happen, depending on the long term plans of the owner, but the easement allows the preservation of important ground without forcing an owner off his property.
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