Post by esshup on Oct 18, 2014 13:42:41 GMT -5
No, the landowner is one of my best friends. He has instructed his daughter, who will get the farm when he dies that I have hunting rights as long as I am alive or want to hunt.
Get it in writing. While loosing your hunting ground can't be as bad as what happened to this guy, getting it in writing can save you some headaches.
Posted on another forum:
Some 22 years ago I was trying to buy this place from a nice old lady… who’s word was golden. The problem at the time was the 10 acre building site was part of a single 300 acre plot… 200 acres of farm ground on this side of the river and 90 acres of wooded on the other. And, to make things more complicated, a new highway was going in which was gonna’ cut right through the farm land.
After a couple weeks of negotiation, and looking at the expenses of breaking the land into different lots, she came to me with a proposal. She wasn’t ready to sell the other ground yet (and the family didn’t want her to), but she didn’t want the headaches of keeping the building site. She suggested I rent the place (damn cheap, just enough to cover taxes and insurance) and treat the place (and maintain it) like it was mine. After the new highway was built, and the family was ready to sell, she’d transfer the building site while crediting any rents paid and any improvements I made. Basically, it was a rent-to-own agreement, with a balloon payment at the end… with an open-ended time period expected to be about five years.
Now, this is gonna’ sound stupid to some of y’all, but handshake agreements between honorable people were still commonplace around here 22 years ago… and they ain’t exactly rare today. She asked me if I required a legal contract, we could split the expenses… “but”, she said as she stuck out her hand, “my word is good, is yours?” Well, I knew the lady, I knew her word was worth more than gold and I smiled as I took here hand.
Well, long-story-short… the lady suffered some health problems shortly after. She introduced me to her son Don (who lived in Philadelphia) and told me he would be overseeing the property from then on. She vouched for his integrity, and he and I reaffirmed the agreement on a handshake in front of the lady. And then, at about the time the “end” was to take place, the lady suddenly and unexpectedly dies. Well crap, now it all goes into an estate, split evenly between the son and his sister. Then (can you believe this?), the sister dies before the estate is settled… splitting her half amongst her children and their spouses.
What this did is extend what was supposed to be a 5-6 year deal into 20 years of headaches. But, through it all, Don never raised the “rent” payment and assured me the agreed upon “end” had not changed. I continued to treat the place as my own (because, well…), and making what improvements I could without the benefit of equity (i.e., I couldn’t barrow against the place).
So about a year ago all the legal stuff had been handled, and the property was split into three parcels… the 10 acre building site, the farm ground and the wooded. Don contacted me and told me to go to the realtor (who I personally know) who was handling the sale. Well, the realtor knew of the “verbal” agreement and we drew up the “offer” based on it. I expected a bit of negotiation, and a possible headache or two, but with Don controlling 50% I wasn’t too overly worried.
I didn’t hear anything for weeks… even though we kept asking for a response. Finally the word comes back that Don was buying the building site. What?? I contact Don and asked him what the Hell was going on and he tells me not to worry, he was having problems with the family so he was just gonna’ buy their half out so he could transfer the place.
Well, another long-story-short… it seems the Don’s integrity ain’t what his mother believed it was. That piece of $h!t used my offer, which was necessarily low because of the agreement 22 years ago, to establish a value with the family (of which he only had to pay half). Then, as soon as he took possession, he flipped the place for a tidy profit. And then, to make things even worse, he pulls in the yard this week and tells my wife he sold the place to someone else, while I’m at work‼ She called me in tears, almost to the point of being hysterical. I stormed out’a work to find that SOB, but what he had done was stopped and told her as he was leaving town, back to Philadelphia.
So we’re pretty much screwed in an end-around, after 22 years we have nothing… and my wife is devastated beyond belief. She’s raising her third child in this house, gave birth to two of them here. I can barely stand to look at her… the pain in her eyes is enough to make me cry like a child. I can’t even think clearly…