Property Deed Problem, Land under question, Quiet Title Action

[Chrissy Boaglio]

This may be very difficult to explain but I will try my best. 

Long story short: the back 10 feet by 50 feet of our plat is not apart of our deed, nor is it owned by the city and we are trying to figure out how we can quickly and cheaply make it legally ours so we can build on it. 

The story: 

We are in the process of building a DADU and had a survey done. We are on a 160 feet by 50 foot plat, with an alley behind us that is 12 feet wide, on Holly st in East Nashville, like all the other homes on our side of the street. Our deed shows our property line is 150 feet by 50 feet (only one on the street) and the back alley being 12ft....So there is an unowned 10feet by 50 feet on the back of our plat that is not in our deed nor apart of Metro's alley. 

We called metro and they ran a deed search and even spoke with their lead GIS coordinator who is able to track our property line being 150 x 50 in the deeds dating back to the 1920 and the hand drawings of the city. The deed right before that is in the 1870s and is "illegible". So you guessed it...someone likely wrote a 5 instead of a 6 and messed up, now screwing us 100+years later.... 

Metro says they legally cant sign off on "abandoning" that land, or what they call mandatory referral, because they don't own it and cant see WHO owns it so we are now being referred to legal and they "think" something called a Quiet Title Action can solve this. 

Now after speaking to a law firm we were told AT MINIMUM this will take a year to solve and thousands of dollars, of course this was an assistant we spoke to, not a lawyer. But that is WAY MORE AND LONGER than what we are looking for and we wanted to ask if anyone has had a similar problem, how they handled it, or if they can refer any Nashville Land use attorneys who may be able to help more quickly and affordably. 

Thanks everyone!