Hey guys, I live down a private road with a few other homeowners. My property is bisected by it. We all live in peace and harmony together, but there's rumors that the lady at the end of the road may sell her house to developers that are developing an adjacent property.

If she sells to them, can they legally use her property as a reason to develop the road more, or run equipment through there?

Our road agreement is something like "a road agreement exists."

There is an easement through my property for the road. I should probably start there.

Im not kidding, our road agreement page on our mortgage paperwork is no more advanced than "there is a road agreement in place."
I use my tractor, other guys use skid steers. We all pitch in, and occasionally pool money for road mix.

Going through the same thing myself.  Judge ruled. We’re fucked. Apparently I own a “public” road that is “privately maintained”. There is a “access and utility easement.”  I guess this somehow means that it is open to the public. Although , there is no mention of “public” access in any document. I’ve lost hope in our judicial system. Good luck.

This is of interest to me as I also live on a private rd.

That doesn’t sound right. Does your road/property connect two pieces of county road? Something like that is the only way I could see it working out how the judge described. You’re not the only way into public land are you?

If it’s not a through road I’d say the hell with it and put up private road signs and  be done with it. That will keep the honest people honest anyway. Something I’ve been meaning to do for our short private road.

I would talk to an attorney

These things get complex, and if she’s already involved with a developer, they will be taking steps to get and keep whatever access they are looking for.

If you and your other neighbors can get ahead of that, you may be able to keep things corralled.

No to all of that. Signs were posted years ago. Didn’t matter in the eyes of the judge. Because there was a “access and service “ easement which was meant for adjoining landowners within the subdivision to have access to their property and for power/services to be run alongside the roads the judge ruled that the roads are now open to the public and I’m supposed to pay the costs to maintain them.

Disgusting.

Unless it is gated and posted, it is public access.  You can make an argument for unreasonable damage, but in the end this is all a civil matter that most judges will be loath to hear.  Good luck, and I hope you have a land plane or grader for your tractor.  You do have a tractor, right?

It is posted as road.  We've talked about a gate, but we do get fedex and ups deliveries to the house, but not USPS.  I'll ask the lawyer about posting it as "no trespassing", see if that would help our case.  Honestly, I don't care if kids or other neighbors walk down there, I just don't want them to ever be able to use it as an access for more than the residences that are currently there, and it sounds like all the neighbors are on board.

I've been paying more attention to it when I drive.  If they ever had to widen it, it would be a pretty huge undertaking, anyone would have to both cut hills and fill valleys to be able to have two lanes.

My tractor has a grading scraper, FEL, and a rear blade.  Once it's done with the worst freezes, I'll have to put in some work.  

Are we neighbors? What we assumed was a county road for years because it was used to service the local water treatment plant is apparently a private road. The city keeps it plowed during the winter to service the plant but it is all private road that goes directly through the center of our multiple properties.
Several years ago the city needed to replace the main water line and they assumed it ran under or parallel to the road,when in fact it ran behind our cabin. We made the mistake of giving them an easement to replace the waterline and put in a new road assuming we would use the "old road" as a private drive to access our properties as they lie at the end of the city limit outside the city limit. Our neighbor just inside city limits claimed the road as "abandoned" and put up a gate that blocking our access. It has been a legal battle that still remains unresolved...

After seeing my wife deal with these issues for years as a county employee and 2 different murders over access issues, I am glad she is a SAHM now.  The law is clear as mud and some people are fiercely defensive of their position.

Best bet will be to find an attorney that does a lot of real estate and property law in the county along with title searches for all the properties along that easement access to see if any of them contain the actual agreement that states the easement road uses or designation.  Are there any deed restrictions on the properties involved?

If there is no document to elaborate beyond “a road agreement exists” you may be able to draft one along with the rest of the current property owners.  

Is there a specified maximum weight for the current driveway/road?

If the developers want to put in a real road to access the planned sub division they, depending on use it might need to be developed to county spec which can get expensive really quick and may deter development for a while.

There are some restrictions on developers such as the number of houses that can be accessed by a dead end road that would be worth looking into as well if the developer doesn’t also have access through another adjacent property.

If the property is sold to developers, you’ll want to keep an eye on whatever the method is for creating a subdivision (county zoning commission?).  It’s a whole lot better to stay ahead of these types of issues by attending meetings and talking with the commissioners.

I’m on a county dirt road that is maintained by the county and mostly paid for by residents along the road.  Maintenance consists of a road grader a few times per year.  Fairly different situation, but some similarities as far as dealing with county planning and such.

I went through an almost similar issue, I own land at what is basically the end of a private road. You have to go through six other properties to get to it. The roads been there longer than I've been alive. It's got a wonderfully storied history about murder and rats. I'm not going into further detail about that. But one of the Neighbors in the middle of the Road decided he didn't want me building at the end of my road on my property. And being we don't have an actual easement in place I don't have any right to cross the guy's property. And there's nothing anybody can really do about it because I can sue, and yes I've spoken to many attorneys, they said it would take about 10 years and half a million dollars for the lawsuit to win even though I can prove the road was there before any of the people that now live on it moved to Montana. I was born here.

Montana's kind of weird on roads. You can landlock someone and they can't access their property through yours. Unless there's an actual easement in place that is. Like one previous poster said, if it just says an easement is in place and nobody has a copy of it that means an easement has to be drafted and agreed upon. If you're the first one to the table you can make some pretty favorable terms for yourself or work with all of your neighbors and force it to be a 20 ft wide paved road with sidewalks that the developer has to put in to handle that many houses. The reality of the situation is, they're coming and you can't stop them without violence. So you just have to make it cost them a lot of money going forward.

How mine turned out was a portion of it touched a County Road, I was able to negotiate with the county and get the address changed to that County Road. It's not maintained but the property can be insured now. And it's worth a whole lot more because it touches the county road and not a private road. That alone pisses off the people that didn't want me to drive through their property to build my cabin. Because now that mine is worth more the taxes have gone up extremely high, compared to what it was, just so I can say F you to the dude that wouldn't let me drive across the road that was there before he moved here from New York. Now his property value has doubled and I've granted access to an 80 acre parcel south of mine for them to break it up into five acre parcels and sell it. Just as a f you to all of those out of Staters that bought on the road where I wanted to build my cabin and didn't want to let me drive through it. Before the county let me change the address because of that 5 ft piece of land touching the County Road, I was going to buy a 40 acre section at the beginning of the road that my properties at the end of, I was then going to put up a sign telling them that if we didn't have an actual agreement in place in writing that I was going to close the road on a certain date. That way if they sued to open it back up they had to use my argument that the road was there long before anybody showed up and that it has to stay open for everybody that owns land on it. It's pretty simple to force people to do what you want them to do when you only give them a couple of options. I let a couple of the property owners act like douchebags to me, just so I could cost them money and piss them off at their private little Kentucky holler that they built for themselves is now going to get loaded up with californians. Because as soon as the 80 acres on my South gets broken up and sold I'm going to put in 10 cabins on my property and then sell them. Just as it even bigger  eff you to those people that didn't want me driving on the road that was named after someone who died 40 years before they got to Montana.

Retired Land surveyor here. Access easements can be a real can of worms. I've found easements with the M DOT in Helena that were never filed in the county court house where they are located A buyer of a mineral survey found his supposed 20 acre claim was only 10 acres and the BLM gained a public access because the original stones were set wrong. I've seen a court case where the presiding judge was related by blood to one of the litigants and wouldn't recuse himself. Deeds that were signed by both parties but hadn't been filed for 60 years. And so on... A certain clerk and recorder/ surveyor who subdivided house lots within a deeded county right of way.

I have an easment that goes along the edge of my property and then at end cross's over onto anther landowners property.

None of it is maintained by the county and everything is the responsibility of the landowner,

We don't have an HOA, but it is recorded that no one can subdivide the 25 acre lots smaller than 5 acres and I don't want anyone that close to me, so my land will stay that size until I am at least dead