FL zoning laws won't let me subdivide my land

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My sister and I inherited a small parcel of unimproved land in Marion County, FL 12 yrs ago. We are jointly on the title. Now we wish to quit claim half to each of us and have a deed legally recorded in each name. No improvements are planned. The STUPID zoning laws say family members can subdivide a parcel IF one takes out a building permit for a primary residence. It will be divided & recorded legally upon the final imspection and the occupancy is granted. It appears my only choice is to sell it. I am reluctant to do this because my great-great grandfather homesteaded this land in a gov grant and it has been in our family for seven generations! It borders the Ocala National Forest on the south and is in a pristine condition, never having been build on except when he homesteaded with a log cabin (do-trot style) and added the out buildings, which all have long fallen to dust. I wanted to keep this untouched & beautiful for my grandchildren. But seems FL wants every scrap peice of land built on so the property taxes can go up! Any suggestions?

-- Eve (owenall@lwol.com), August 24, 2001

Answers

If your not going to do anything with it, they why does it matter? Seem to me that both you have to agree to sell and neither do, so it can be sold. If you do manage to split it up then 1/2 is at risk of being sold and developed, not what you seem to want. If you do want to keep it in the family then put it in a trust with sepecific direction that it never be sold.

-- Gary (gws@redbird.net), August 24, 2001.

could one of you "sell" your half to the other one??? I think you need to talk to a good land lawyer in your area!

Zoning laws to me are pretty stupid every where. If I wanted to live somewhere zoned I would live in the city! or a gated community or something!

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), August 24, 2001.


Do you have proof (pictures/drawings, photos, geneology records, county recorder documents) from when the buildings were standing? Maybe you could be grandfathered in and allowed to subdivide because from what you're saying there WAS a house on it at one time. Is or was there a mail box on the property? Someone may have old letters with the address. Do you have the original government grant?

The town I was living in exempted a new railroad station being built from having an EPA environmental impact report (cost of at least $100,000) because there had been an old railroad station on the same site previously, even though it had been torn down years ago. Reasoning was that the use was okayed before, so they didn't need to go through the process again.

One option is for one of you to sell to the other, perhaps giving the other "right of first refusal at fair market value" before selling to anyone else. Are you "joint tenants with right of survivorship" or "tenants in common"? This makes a big difference when disposing of the property either by sale or by a will. Nothing like family fights when people 2 or 3 levels removed inherit property (and I'm just talking blood relations here, in-laws or 2nd, 3rd, etc. spouses can make things much worse).

Another option is to see if you can get the land into a trust or deed it over to some organization like the Nature Conservancy with provisions that allow you free access to the land during certain times of the year. Kind of like some object being on "permanent loan" to a museum.

Do you really think your grandchildren will want this property in future or is this just your hope? I know that may sound like a dumb question, but people move more and more often these days and it wouldn't be the first time someone was left a piece of land and that person sold it to pay taxes, move or whatever.

You can also try writing your Congressperson and explaining the situation--they may be able to help you. The original government grant may be of help here. At any rate, if your state has this, and you qualify, as long as you don't plan to build on it anyway, see if you can lower your taxes for "maintaining wild habitat" or similar programs in the meantime.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 24, 2001.


You have lots of options. From your post I can not tell just why you want to subdivide.

One of you might lease the other, half of what you own for a little while (like 99 years) this could effectivly cause the division.

You might create an inter-vivous trust, a land trust; where each party owns a percentage of the whole. The same thing could be effectivly accomplished by using a family limited partnership. There are several ways to hold title and distribute the percentages of use to one and the other. Some avoid probate as well. A good lawyer can explain.

Now all that said, the usual reason that I see people wanting to subdivide a piece of land like yours is that one party or the other wants to make a "big profit", usually regardless of what they are saying now. So if it's not you then who is it.

-- Ed Copp (OH) (edcopp@yahoo.com), August 24, 2001.


Thanks to all. Suzy, I agree and AL is looking mighty good. I have a lawyer friend and after that great suggestion, I'm gonna ask for his opinion. And I have always wanted to do the research on the orginal land grant. Now's the time. You guys helped move me from frustrated to action. Tks.

-- Eve (owenall@lwol.com), August 25, 2001.


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