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Articles 1 - 30 of 68
Full-Text Articles in Property Law and Real Estate
The Status Of Private Covenants In Gross In Maine, Geoffrey Forney
The Status Of Private Covenants In Gross In Maine, Geoffrey Forney
Maine Law Review
In State v. Moosehead Mountain Resort, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court recently held that the State may enforce a restrictive covenant in gross. The decision appears to create new law by departing from the established rule in Maine, as laid down in an earlier decision in Brown v. Heirs of Fuller, that restrictive covenants in gross are not enforceable in equity. Although the holding in Moosehead Mountain is arguably narrow because the case only addressed the government's ability to enforce covenants in gross, the Law Court's omission of any reference to or discussion of its decision in Brown leaves open …
Equitable Housing Policy, Peter R. Pitegoff
Suggested Revisions In Maine's Planning And Land Use Control Enabling Legislation—Part Ii, Orlando E. Delogu
Suggested Revisions In Maine's Planning And Land Use Control Enabling Legislation—Part Ii, Orlando E. Delogu
Maine Law Review
The process which transfers land from its natural or an unintensively used agricultural state to house lots, shopping centers, or industrial sites is often referred to as land subdivision. No more long-lasting or fundamental series of changes with respect to the land can be imagined; yet the process in Maine is not only unregulated by the state and by most local levels of government, but is not at present capable of being regulated in any meaningful sense of the word. No state statutes exist which impose even the most reasonable standards, limitations, or procedural safeguards on either the process of …
Maine Real Estate Law, Donald W. Philbrick
Maine Real Estate Law, Donald W. Philbrick
Maine Law Review
The author, a former lecturer at the University of Maine School of Law, in the book's foreword, disclaims that his book is written for lawyers. In this disclaimer, he is far too modest. Most lawyers who deal with matters concerning real estate law will benefit by a refresher course. This volume provides an excellent and very readable combination of English and Colonial historical background and current Maine law.
A Marketable Title Act For Maine, Chadbourn H. Smith
A Marketable Title Act For Maine, Chadbourn H. Smith
Maine Law Review
Conveyancing procedure in Maine, as in many other states, has become progressively more complex. Under the traditional recording system two elements—an ever-growing labyrinth of land records and the consequent likelihood of a defect in the chain of title—make repetitive, over-meticulous title examinations common, and uncertainty almost inevitable. Both of these elements must be eradicated by effective legislation, redefining and promoting marketability. No longer should landholders be faced with a constant challenge from the past, protection against which is by means of an expensive title report, carefully conditioned and couched in terms of the title-searcher's opinion rather than law. Attorneys should …
Contract Zoning: A Flexible Technique For Protecting Maine Municipalities, Maine Law Review
Contract Zoning: A Flexible Technique For Protecting Maine Municipalities, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
Since the constitutionality of comprehensive zoning plans was upheld by the 1926 United States Supreme Court decision in Euclid v. Ambler Realty, municipal zoning has become an acceptable, indeed a necessary, fact of life. Maine, as well as most states, has enacted zoning enabling legislation pursuant to which many Maine municipalities have adopted zoning ordinances. The standard zoning approach which has evolved since Euclid has been based largely on the concept of uniform gridiron districts which conform to a legislatively preconceived comprehensive plan intended to assist municipalities in maintaining an orderly growth. These comprehensive plans, however, frequently have become a …
Special Benefits And Just Compensation: Ensuring Fair Treatment Of Landowners In Partial Taking Cases, Maine Law Review
Special Benefits And Just Compensation: Ensuring Fair Treatment Of Landowners In Partial Taking Cases, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
The sovereign power to take private property for public use is counterbalanced by the duty to provide just compensation. The just compensation requirement is intended to protect the individual landowner when the government exercises its right of eminent domain. Consistent with the equitable principle of fairness upon which this requirement is founded, the government must provide the individual with public funds for property transferred from his private use to the public domain. The just compensation requirement thereby distributes the costs of public projects equally among all members of society and ensures that no individual whose property is sacrificed for the …
Maine's Public Lots: The Emergence Of A Public Trust, Lee M. Schepps
Maine's Public Lots: The Emergence Of A Public Trust, Lee M. Schepps
Maine Law Review
Maine's public lots were originally reserved from conveyances of townships of public domain and were held by the state for the benefit of schools in the towns which would or could someday be created among the unorganized townships of the state. Many towns came into existence and inherited their public lots for the purposes for which the lots were reserved. Unlike many other states, however, almost half of the land area of Maine has never been incorporated into towns. Because of the great number of townships which have never been incorporated into towns, there are now approximately 400,000 acres of …
Title Disputes After Probate Or Administration, Maine Law Review
Title Disputes After Probate Or Administration, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
Title to realty generally passes by sale, by devise or by descent. Each method of transfer through its respective system of rules and requirements seeks to protect the interests of society as well as the interests of the immediate parties to a transfer of ownership. When a sale, as an inter vivos transfer, follows a transfer of realty by either devise or descent, a gap may appear in the protection afforded to the various parties by each system of rules. Specifically, the purchase of estate realty from a distributee under probate or administration may jeopardize the purchaser's status as owner. …
Time-Share Condominiums: Property's Fourth Dimension, David R. Dubord
Time-Share Condominiums: Property's Fourth Dimension, David R. Dubord
Maine Law Review
Time-shared ownership of condominiums is a concept which, though virtually unheard of in this country ten years ago, has now gained a foothold in America's real estate market. Essentially, time-sharing involves the division of ownership of a condominium into a number of fixed time periods during which each purchaser has the exclusive right of use and occupation. While condominium ownership itself is an ancient and well-established method of joint property ownership, what is novel about time-sharing is the division of joint ownership rights into binding periods of exclusive use and possession. The methods of creating time-shared interests are varied and …
The Constitutionality Of Maine's Real Estate Mortgage Foreclosure Statutes, Kathleen Barry
The Constitutionality Of Maine's Real Estate Mortgage Foreclosure Statutes, Kathleen Barry
Maine Law Review
In Maine, Fuentes v. Shevin caused understandable concern about the constitutionality of the state statutes governing real property mortgage foreclosures. Of the foreclosure procedures existing in 1972, only one provided for impartial determination by a court of the mortgagor's breach of condition. In response to Fuentes, the Maine Legislature in 1975 enacted a straightforward provision for foreclosure by civil action. Although the constitutionality of Maine's pre-1975 foreclosure statutes under the fourteenth amendment has not been litigated, lenders in Maine's largest city have recently abandoned all methods of foreclosure except foreclosure by civil action. Lenders, debtors, and legislators in Maine would …
Securing Solar Access In Maine, Martha Freeman
Securing Solar Access In Maine, Martha Freeman
Maine Law Review
This Comment explores the common law property concepts of nuisance, water law, and easements which arise by operation of law in order to determine the kind and degree of solar access protection they can provide Maine residential users of solar energy. The final section of this Comment proposes an express solar easement by which Maine citizens can create their own enforceable interests in unobstructed sunlight for solar energy use. In highly urbanized areas where space is scarce and already developed, the conflicts between solar energy users and other land and airspace users may be too difficult to resolve. In Maine, …
Maine's Action To Try Title: A Proposal For Statutory Reform, Eve Hlavatý Cimmet
Maine's Action To Try Title: A Proposal For Statutory Reform, Eve Hlavatý Cimmet
Maine Law Review
Maine law provides three distinct statutory proceedings to try title: the real action, an action at law to quiet title, and an action in equity to quiet title. As the preceding Comment demonstrates, the present statutory scheme preserves outmoded distinctions between law and equity that are functionally obsolete in modern civil practice. Although the statutory law governing actions to try title in most states is, like Maine's, a patchwork product replete with archaic concepts, several other states have consolidated legal and equitable remedies into simple, comprehensive statutory actions. This Comment proposes a similar statute for Maine in the interest of …
Maine's Actions To Try Title: A Historical Perspective, Gregory W. Powell
Maine's Actions To Try Title: A Historical Perspective, Gregory W. Powell
Maine Law Review
Actions to try title are commonly used by Maine lawyers to adjudicate real estate title conflicts. Though often time consuming, expensive, and complicated, such actions are necessary in any state that seeks to foster a stable, economically efficient real estate market. Actions to try title have been necessary in all states because no protective statutory scheme for land titles has ever succeeded in eliminating all title defects that interfere with quiet possession or salability. Maine is no exception. Until a more effective statutory scheme for securing titles and restoring land's marketability becomes available, actions to try title will remain important …
Coastal Recreation: Legal Methods For Securing Public Rights In The Seashore, Jeffrey D. Curtis
Coastal Recreation: Legal Methods For Securing Public Rights In The Seashore, Jeffrey D. Curtis
Maine Law Review
The coastal shores of the United States are a peculiar form of property in that both the littoral landowner and the general public have legally protected interests in the use and enjoyment of the land. In most coastal states the title to the land below the high-water mark is vested in the state in trust for the beneficial use of the public, subject to certain limited rights of the littoral owner. Maine and Massachusetts, however, share a unique allocation of public and private interests which vests the title to the foreshore, the land between the high and low water marks, …
The Dilemma Of Local Land Use Control: Power Without Responsibility, Orlando E. Delogu
The Dilemma Of Local Land Use Control: Power Without Responsibility, Orlando E. Delogu
Maine Law Review
Land use planning and control has traditionally been perceived as a set of issues best dealt with by local government. State governments historically have been called upon to provide nothing more than a suitable framework of planning and land use control enabling legislation. In recent years some states have sought to address land use issues having regional or statewide impact. This has usually been done on an intra-state basis, however, and meaningful interstate or multi-state approaches to land use problems, though much discussed in the literature, are almost non-existent in practice. Federal involvement in land use issues has also been …
Dunham V. Ware Savings Bank: Economic Policy And Federal Law Justify Enforcement Of Due-On-Sale Clauses By State-Chartered Institutions, Martha E. Greene
Dunham V. Ware Savings Bank: Economic Policy And Federal Law Justify Enforcement Of Due-On-Sale Clauses By State-Chartered Institutions, Martha E. Greene
Maine Law Review
Economic policy should replace state property doctrines as the controlling factor in determining enforceability of due-on-sale clauses. A due-on-sale clause provides mortgagees (lenders) with the means to accelerate the term of a mortgage upon transfer of the original mortgagor's (borrower's) interest in the mortgaged property. Lenders originally used due-on-sale clauses for the purpose of evaluating whether the party to whom the original borrower sought to assign the mortgage was creditworthy. As interest rates have risen, lenders increasingly have used due-on-sale clauses to terminate their commitments to lend mortgage funds at relatively low interest rates. Mortgage instruments secure a borrower's promise …
Deinstitutionalizing The Mentally Retarded In Maine: The Inevitable Face-Off With Zoning, Pamela D. Albee
Deinstitutionalizing The Mentally Retarded In Maine: The Inevitable Face-Off With Zoning, Pamela D. Albee
Maine Law Review
In July 1978, agencies and officials of the State of Maine entered into a federal consent judgment which terminated a class action lawsuit that had dragged on for three years. The consent judgment in Wuori v. Zitnay detailed a comprehensive plan designed to bring about speedy and meaningful relief to the plaintiff class: mentally retarded citizens of Maine involuntarily confined to Pineland Center, Maine's principal institution for the mentally retarded, and certain others who were conditionally released from Pineland and in community placements. The relief granted was a right to be provided the least restrictive and most normal living conditions …
Stewart V. Inhabitants Of Durham: An Exclusionary Purpose Ignored, Peter Alexander Meyer
Stewart V. Inhabitants Of Durham: An Exclusionary Purpose Ignored, Peter Alexander Meyer
Maine Law Review
Exclusionary zoning of mobile homes has become an increasingly important issue in Maine because of escalating costs of conventional housing and rising unmet housing needs. Although towns may regulate mobile home or any other housing use in order to foster public health, safety, morals, or general welfare, they may not enact a zoning ordinance to exclude people of lower income in an attempt to avoid the "increased governmental costs and the stresses upon public services which generally accompany such an incursion." In Stewart v. Inhabitants of Durham, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court was confronted with an exclusionary purpose in a …
Gifts, Joint Ownership, And Marital Property: Interspousal Transfers Of Property Under Maine's Marital Property Act, Paul Fillmore
Gifts, Joint Ownership, And Marital Property: Interspousal Transfers Of Property Under Maine's Marital Property Act, Paul Fillmore
Maine Law Review
The classification of property in divorce proceedings as either marital or individual is crucial because under Maine's Marital Property Act a divorce decree can dispose of only marital property. Once the court identifies the marital property, the actual division of that property is within the court's discretion. Courts, however, often have difficulty classifying property which was once individual property but which was transferred by the owner spouse into joint ownership during the course of the marriage. Maine courts have reached different results in these situations depending on whether they have read the Marital Property Act literally or in the context …
The Waiver Problem In Maine Real Property Foreclosure Law: A Commercial Paper Perspective, Dennis M. Patterson
The Waiver Problem In Maine Real Property Foreclosure Law: A Commercial Paper Perspective, Dennis M. Patterson
Maine Law Review
When a mortgagee accepts from a mortgagor payment of part of a mortgage arrearage, does the mortgagee then waive its right to foreclose? Many bank counsel will say that the mortgagee does waive its right to foreclose, and they will point for authority to the broad holding of Savings & Loan Association of Bangor v. Tear. In that decision, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, seemed to hold that a mortgagee waives its right to foreclose if it accepts tender of a late payment. This broad interpretation of the Savings & Loan decision has proven to …
Wilderness, Trust, And Finality: The Baxter State Park Snowmobile Dispute, Ellen Kandoian, Brooke E. Barnes
Wilderness, Trust, And Finality: The Baxter State Park Snowmobile Dispute, Ellen Kandoian, Brooke E. Barnes
Maine Law Review
The recent controversies surrounding the use of snowmobiles in Baxter State Park exemplify the human essence of the trust relationship and the law's awkwardness in addressing the inherently nonlegalistic principles of trust. Baxter State Park is an area of 201,018 acres in northern Maine, purchased by former Governor Percival Proctor Baxter and then donated to the State of Maine in trust. The park includes Mount Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine and the head of the Appalachian Trail. As Chief Justice McKusick wrote in a recent decision construing the trust, "in its combination of size, uniqueness, permanence, and vision, his …
Managing The Cumulative Effects Of Coastal Land Development: Can Maine Law Meet The Challenge?, Alison Rieser
Managing The Cumulative Effects Of Coastal Land Development: Can Maine Law Meet The Challenge?, Alison Rieser
Maine Law Review
Following a period of slow economic growth for the State of Maine in the early part of this decade, improved economic conditions and new demographic trends have renewed the demand for commercial, residential, and recreational development in coastal communities across the state. For many years, Maine has tried to stimulate growth in its communities. Now, many of its coastal towns face a huge development boom, particularly in the southern and mid-coast areas, in communities such as York, Wells, Ogunquit, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Portland, Camden, and Belfast. These towns are struggling to find ways to control the increasing density of development along …
General Discretion Under Maine's Site Location Of Development Law, Tybe Ann Brett
General Discretion Under Maine's Site Location Of Development Law, Tybe Ann Brett
Maine Law Review
The 1960s brought nationwide concern about the environmental impact of post-World War II development and industrial growth. Efforts to protect the environment took many different forms. Part of Maine's response to the growing need for environmental improvement measures was the Legislature's enactment in 1970 of the Site Location of Development Law (Site Law). The Site Law gives the state control over the location of developments that would substantially affect the environment, rather than leaving such decisions to single towns and individual developers. The Law also addresses concerns beyond those dealt with in air and water pollution control legislation. The Site …
Construing "Consideration" In Maine's Recreational Use Statute: Robbins V. Great Northern Paper Co., Russell B. Pierce Jr.
Construing "Consideration" In Maine's Recreational Use Statute: Robbins V. Great Northern Paper Co., Russell B. Pierce Jr.
Maine Law Review
Since 1961, when the Legislature enacted the original version of Maine's "recreational use statute," the Maine Supreme Judicial Court has had little opportunity to construe the statute's several components. The recent case of Robbins v. Great Northern Paper Co., however, allowed the court to interpret the "consideration" exception of the statute for the first time. In a 4-3 decision, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, ruled that a $95.00 annual rental fee for noncommercial, recreational use of a lot on the defendant's property did not constitute "consideration" so as to fall within the exception to landowner …
Rethinking The History Of The Seventeenth-Century Colonial Ordinance: A Reinterpretation Of An Ancient Statute, Mark Cheung
Rethinking The History Of The Seventeenth-Century Colonial Ordinance: A Reinterpretation Of An Ancient Statute, Mark Cheung
Maine Law Review
In 1648, the Massachusetts colonial government ordered into print The Book of the General Laws and Libertyes that included an ordinance, commonly known as the Colonial Ordinance. The Ordinance extended private seashore property rights to the low water mark but to no more than one hundred rods beyond the high-water mark. The 1648 Ordinance replaced an earlier version enacted in the Body of Liberties of 1641. While both versions of the Ordinance enumerated public rights of fishing, fowling, and navigation in the foreshore, the 1648 Ordinance provided the critical language extending the private boundary to the low water mark. Prior …
Shoreline Access In Rhode Island: A Case Study Of Black Point, Michael Rubin
Shoreline Access In Rhode Island: A Case Study Of Black Point, Michael Rubin
Maine Law Review
Access to the shoreline in Rhode Island has been a strong tradition since the colonial era. However, with increasing development pressures on the formerly rural shore areas, especially in the region of the state commonly called "South County," it was only a matter of time before public and private interests collided over the diminishing resource. That inevitable collision occurred at a particular piece of shorefront property known as Black Point, in the Town of Narragansett, when a developer purchased this large tract of ocean-front property and proposed the construction of luxury condominiums. The project would entail the closing of an …
Expanding Public Access By Codifying The Public Trust Doctrine: The Massachusetts Experience, William L. Lahey, Lauren Sandler Zurier, Kenneth W. Salinger
Expanding Public Access By Codifying The Public Trust Doctrine: The Massachusetts Experience, William L. Lahey, Lauren Sandler Zurier, Kenneth W. Salinger
Maine Law Review
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is dramatically expanding public access to the coast through statutory and regulatory codification of the public trust doctrine. Is this legislative and administrative experiment relevant to other states, particularly to Maine? The initial answer to this question may depend on the meaning of the Bell v. Town of Wells decision. For better or for worse, Massachusetts jurisprudence set the course followed by the majority of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in Bell. To some, including several of the authors in this symposium, the bearing of the Massachusetts courts leads to a civic wasteland where the public's …
Intellectual Indifference—Intellectual Dishonesty: The Colonial Ordinance, The Equal Footing Doctrine, And The Maine Law Court, Orlando E. Delogu
Intellectual Indifference—Intellectual Dishonesty: The Colonial Ordinance, The Equal Footing Doctrine, And The Maine Law Court, Orlando E. Delogu
Maine Law Review
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the recent Bell decision was the fact that it was 4-3, that significant public interests were lost because a bare majority refused to examine, in the detail necessary, the Colonial Ordinance, old and new United States Supreme Court cases, Maine law, or the reasoning of their own colleagues who filed a compelling dissenting opinion in the case. A mere recitation of the dissenting opinion would serve no useful purpose—it is a part of the public record; its rationale speaks for itself. Had the rationale of the dissent been adopted by the majority it would …
Public Access And The New England Shoreline: Editors' Foreword, Kathryn L. Vezina Editor-In-Chief
Public Access And The New England Shoreline: Editors' Foreword, Kathryn L. Vezina Editor-In-Chief
Maine Law Review
In August 1989, the Marine Law Institute and the Maine Law Review cosponsored a symposium, "Moody Beach and Beyond: Public Use and Private Rights in the New England Shoreline," in Portland, Maine, to provide a forum for presentation of ideas regarding public access rights to intertidal lands. The controversy at Moody Beach was the starting point for the discussion, but the conference included papers dealing with public access issues in other states as well. Four of the papers from this symposium are included in this issue of the Maine Law Review. As were the presentations last August, these articles are …