Circa 1986, I purchased a little house in Villa Rica. It had a shared driveway that went past my house to my neighbor’s (we:ll call him Mr. M).
When I’d get home, I went past my house and immediately turned left onto my parking pad. Mr. M used the same driveway but, of course, kept going passed my place to his house.
A few months after I moved in, I was served with legal documents asserting that I could no longer use the driveway that probably every property owner had used since that little house was built decades earlier.
We didn’t have a computer, the Internet or anything automated. I couldn’t afford a lawyer even in my dreams. So I was on my own to work on my own case to protect my interests. So I went to the courthouse and pulled deeds, property records and even somehow found construction notes.
It took several trips, but I found what I needed to end the dispute forever.
To the attorney who’d had me served I sent the lot plots, surveys, deeds and relevant official records to both properties.
Turns out, both original property owners had signed, and recorded that the city water my neighbor enjoyed, went through my property. I found a copy of the plot that had the notes where there was an agreement there would be a mutual benefit to each neighbor about the water rights and the shared driveway.
So Mr. M learned what it would cost him to have to remove his water lines from my property which would hand him his exclusive driveway. He dropped his argument, and I never heard from them again.
I also made sure that the county reordered the paperwork somehow however they needed to do it to make sure those documents were clearly associated with the deeds.
Case closed! 😁
