Your Legal Description is Wrong

We had an interesting transaction last year. Our clients, the Marbles, (names have been changed), were looking for a second home. We found an estate property that was a really good deal. The property was held in a trust. The owner had passed away, and his children (the successor trustees) were selling the property.

During our property research, we noticed that there were some new corner pins on the property. We found the recorded survey and we asked around to find out what happened. As it turns out, the previous owner was disabled and wanted to build a handicapped bathroom in the back of the home. Unfortunately, the original property line would not give him enough setback distance to meet the zoning code. He then met with his neighbor and they agreed to swivel the property line to create the additional setback. So, they had a survey done. One triangle went to the neighbor and one triangle went to the disable man. All was well and good until the disabled man decided to place his property in a trust.

The disabled man wrote a quit claim deed and deeded his original lot number into the trust. However, he neglected to realize that he no longer owned the original lot. He owned a portion of the original lot and a portion of his neighbor's lot. To make matters worse, the disabled man passed away, and now part of the property was in the trust and part of the property was personally owned. The personally owned portion would therefore be subject to testate laws that could tie up the property in legal limbo for months.

We drafted an extremely detailed letter describing all of this and noting that the disabled man obviously intended to put the both parcels into the trust. We got everything ok'd through the Title department and they were able to re-record the deed into the trust and then record a deed of sale to the Marbles.