The attorneys at Olson, Redford & Wahlberg, P.A. have litigated and mediated many cases involving the location of boundary lines and legal access for residential and commercial real estate.

Our attorneys are regularly invited to speak at continuing legal education seminars on the topics of boundary and access law. Attorneys Shaun Redford and Katie Wahlberg were invited again to speak at the annual Minnesota Real Estate Institute on the topic of establishing legal access to real property.

Easements and road access are sometimes obtained through use or occupancy. Access may also be obtained through purchase; through cartway or cart path claims; through express and implied easements; and by prescriptive easements. In 2019, Attorneys Shaun Redford and Katie Wahlberg co-authored a chapter in the Minnesota Real Estate Title Deskbook on a variety of these topics, including litigating claims of adverse possession, boundary by practical location, and establishing legal access. An article written in 2017 by attorney Wahlberg sets out the various means by which access to real property can be established.

Issues often come up when a new survey is prepared. A survey may correctly locate corners, lines, angles, lakeshore intersection, fences, and encroaching structures. The attorneys at Olson, Redford & Wahlberg, P.A. have extensive experience working with surveyors to meet clients’ goals and to resolve real estate disputes, including boundary line and access disputes. Attorney Wahlberg co-authored Attorneys & Surveyors: Practice Pointers for the Real Property Law Section of the MN State Bar Association.

While a survey may accurately locate historic survey monuments, ownership of land may actually change hands over time (even without a court order) if a neighbor puts up a fence, a retaining wall, a line of trees or shrubs, or a shed, for example, and the improvement is allowed to remain for an extended period of time. There is a statute of limitations to recover land which might apply. It is generally said that to acquire land by adverse possession a claimant must prove five separate elements. He/she must have actual possession. The possession must be open. Possession has to be continuous. The possession must be exclusive. Last, it must be hostile. Hostile possession only means that the claimant acts consistent with a belief in ownership.

Our attorneys have extensive experience in a separate legal theory called boundary by practical location which can also change ownership to land. This can occur where neighbors agreed at one time on the location of a boundary. It could happen when one stands by when another builds a fence, for example, in the wrong location and says nothing. And it can happen if a fence or other structure is put near a surveyed boundary and then remains for 15 years or more with owners’ understanding the fence line to be the common boundary line. The boundary may be established due to one of these three situations. In 2018, attorney Wahlberg presented at the Annual Meeting of the MN Society of Professional Surveyors on the topic of boundary by practical location and Torrens boundary registration actions.