I filed the report in a binder. I labeled it clearly. I made two copies. One stayed in my house. One went to my attorney, a land use lawyer named Patricia Cole, who had handled rural property disputes for 30 years. I didn’t ask her to act yet. I just wanted her to have it. Patricia called me the same evening she received it.
Her voice was measured. She said the situation was straightforward from a property rights standpoint. The pipe was on my land. The wellhead was on my land without a recorded easement. The HOA had no legal right to that water. She used the word trespass. She also used the word patience. She told me not to move yet. She said to keep watching.
I followed that advice. In the fifth week of ownership, I walked the western treeine again. I brought a handheld GPS unit and a camera. I wanted my own photographic record separate from Gerald’s professional survey. I photographed the wellhead from four angles. I photographed the pipe where it entered the ground.
I photographed the boundary marker Gerald had placed with the wellhead visible in the same frame. Time stamp on every image. I logged the coordinates manually in my notebook alongside the photos. That same afternoon, a truck pulled up on the Maplewood estate side of the fence line. Two men got out. They wore no uniforms. They carried tools.
They walked directly to a point about 30 ft inside the HOA property line, just on their side, and began inspecting something in the ground. A valve box, I later confirmed. They opened it, checked something, and closed it again. They did not cross onto my land. They did not acknowledge me standing 60 yard away. I noted the time.
I noted the truck, white, no markings, a local contractor plate. I photographed it. I wrote everything down. When I got home, I did not approach them. I did not speak. I just watched. 3 days later, I received a letter. It was printed on Maplewood Estates HOA letterhead. The return address listed a board president named Richard Thorne.
The letter was brief. It welcomed me to the area. It mentioned that the community had historically relied on a shared water source near the property boundary and expressed hope that I would continue to honor the existing arrangement. I read that letter four times. There was no mention of any legal agreement, no reference to an easement, no documentation attached, just the assumption stated plainly that I would continue allowing them to take water from my land because that was how things had always been. I set the letter on my
desk. I photographed it. I scanned it. I sent the scan to Patricia that same night with a single line. They’ve acknowledged the pipe in writing without citing any legal basis. Patricia replied within the hour. She said, “Save everything. Do not respond yet.” So, I didn’t. Patricia’s strategy was simple. Build the record first, respond second.
She had seen cases like this before. Not identical, but similar. A landowner arrives. A neighbor has been using something, a road, a well, a drainage ditch without permission. The neighbor assumes silence means consent. The longer the silence, the stronger their eventual adverse possession claim could theoretically become.
But Patricia explained that adverse possession on a newly purchased property where the new owner had already documented the encroachment within weeks of taking title was extremely difficult to argue. I had moved fast enough. The survey was dated. The photographs were timestamped. The HOA’s own letter was now in my file.
