How do the powers at be decide what route someone would have in terms of the access?
Say a property is dead center of 2 or 3 other tracts up here in the mountains, do they just find the shortest route? How do they decide whether access will be from the top of a mountain/ bottom of a mountain or go based off of which one the owner wants to pursue or what?
I’ve seen it play out different ways, so I don’t think there’s many set in stone guidelines. Probably really depends mostly on the judge and who and what he knows. A couple times, I saw the obvious route chosen, and other times the opposite. Saw a case where the judge chose an existing road. Saw another where he chose a route through the back side of a property when a more direct, existing route was ignored. By taking the long way, the landlocked landowners had to build a road that gave the blocking party good access to parts of their property that they didn’t have previously. I think the law only says that “reasonable” access is to be granted. What’s reasonable to one person might not be reasonable to another. And remember, none of this is free. You still have to pay the blocking party and potentially build or repair roads.
