Property with no official right of way

[Account Closed]

Hi, I purchased a property without seeing it, from a bank foreclosure sale. Finally, after 4 months, I get out to see it and it’s way better than I imagined! The driveway goes through an old abandoned church property that is a tax exempt religious property listed under holiness church trustees. Finally I talked to the land owner beside us who owns 100 acres of farm land. He said he wanted our property, and tried to buy it before it foreclosed and that we had no legal right of way. Part of the land boarders on state park property, which is only a small strip of land on our side of the road. On the other side of the road is a large state park picnic area etc. So we had three options for access, I thought, until I found out the state park had a small strip on our side of the road. Then the guy with 100 acres has a road that runs beside the property and I thought that was a county maintained road, but it’s not; it’s his. That leaves me with the good old 100 year old abandoned church where the driveway has been going through for about 60 years. The house has modern electric services with a digital meter for whoever lived there before. Please help: Do we have legal right of way through the church property where the driveway (right of way) has been used for over 50 years?

Is it impossible to get right of way from a State park?

Note: The church has been out of use for many years and is filled with someone’s farm equipment (still on record as a tax exempt church and no taxes have been payed on it)

- the land owner next to us says he will not give us access on his road.

Any ideas help! Thanks

[JD Martin]

Most states have some sort of access law, i.e. it's illegal to landlock someone's property so that there is no practical way of accessing it. In some cases you may have to file in court, and possibly pay some fair easement assessment, but generally you cannot be barred from getting to your property. In your case here, there's probably a prescriptive easement through the church area that you can have enforced if it comes down to it. The neighboring property owner is just trying to scare you off into selling the property to him, and at a likely cheaper cost than he would have paid at auction.