Michigan property ownership often involves more than a deed and a closing date. Questions concerning waterfront rights, easements, access, zoning, title issues, and land use restrictions can significantly affect the value and use of property long after a transaction is complete.
Attorney Dane Carey has built a legal practice around these issues. Based in Grayling, Michigan, W. Dane Carey is a partner at Carey Jaskowski PLC. He represents property owners, businesses, developers, associations, and municipalities in matters involving real estate litigation, riparian rights, water law, land use, and complex civil disputes throughout Michigan.
His practice focuses on helping clients navigate complex questions involving ownership, access, title, water rights, land use, and development throughout Michigan.
According to Carey, one lesson appears repeatedly across these matters: property rights should be understood before a dispute, purchase, or development project creates costly consequences.
Why Michigan Property Law Requires Careful Review
Michigan presents unique challenges for property owners because legal disputes often involve a combination of land, water, family history, access rights, and longstanding assumptions. A waterfront parcel may have been held by the same family for generations. A private road may have been used for decades without a clear understanding of ownership or legal access. A restriction recorded years ago may become critical when a property owner seeks to build, subdivide, or alter the use of land.
As a result, many property disputes require a detailed review of deeds, plats, surveys, easements, local ordinances, restrictive covenants, historical records, and Michigan case law. Questions that initially appear straightforward often become more complicated when the underlying documents are examined.
Carey’s practice reflects the reality that these questions rarely have simple answers. This is particularly true in northern Michigan, where lakes, private roads, older subdivisions, and historical plats frequently shape the legal landscape.
The Value Of Local Legal Knowledge
State law is only part of the analysis in many real estate matters. Local ordinances can affect everything from short-term rentals and dock placement to accessory structures, private roads, and nonconforming uses.
Property owners sometimes assume that obtaining a permit resolves all legal issues. In reality, government approval and private property rights operate on separate tracks. A township may approve a project under its zoning ordinance while a deed restriction, easement, or covenant continues to limit what can be done with the property.
Likewise, Carey notes that the fact that a neighboring owner has used property in a certain way for years does not necessarily establish a legal right to continue doing so. Understanding the distinction between public regulation and private property rights is often critical to avoiding future disputes.
Common Misunderstandings About Waterfront Property
Waterfront property presents some of the most frequently misunderstood legal issues in Michigan.
Many property owners assume that any right to access a lake automatically includes full riparian rights. Michigan law does not always support that assumption. A property owner may have the right to reach the water without possessing the full bundle of riparian rights associated with waterfront ownership, including the right to install docks, moor boats, place hoists, or exercise other incidents of riparian use. Whether those rights exist depends upon the governing deeds, easements, plats, restrictions, and applicable Michigan law.
Carey emphasizes that questions concerning bottomland ownership are also a common source of confusion. Many owners assume their underwater boundaries simply extend from their side lot lines into the lake. In reality, Michigan courts often apply principles of equitable apportionment, which seek to allocate riparian areas fairly based upon shoreline configuration and access to navigable water.
These distinctions can have significant consequences for dock placement, boat mooring, shared access areas, and disputes among neighboring owners.
Due Diligence Before Closing
Carey’s advice for property buyers is direct: treat due diligence seriously. A property may appear straightforward, but its legal rights may be narrow, disputed, or poorly documented.
One of the most common mistakes buyers make is assuming a property’s legal rights are as broad as its marketing materials suggest.
For waterfront purchases, buyers should confirm the precise nature of any water rights before closing. Direct waterfront ownership, association access, deeded lake access, and limited easement rights may provide dramatically different levels of use and control.
Rural property presents similar concerns. A driveway, two-track, seasonal road, or informal access route may have been used for decades without creating a legally enforceable right of access. Buyers should carefully review title commitments, surveys, easements, road agreements, zoning restrictions, utility access, environmental limitations, and other documents affecting the property.
Title insurance and surveys are important tools, but neither replaces legal analysis. A title commitment may identify recorded exceptions without explaining their practical impact.
The most cost-effective time to identify a problem is before a transaction closes. Once ownership changes hands, available remedies may become more limited and significantly more expensive.
The Importance of Documentation
Real estate disputes frequently turn on language written decades earlier. A single sentence in a deed, easement, restrictive covenant, plat dedication, or settlement agreement can significantly alter the legal analysis. For that reason, careful document review remains central to property law.
Carey’s work places significant weight on careful written legal analysis. Correspondence, pleadings, motions, briefs, and settlement documents often shape the course of a dispute long before trial. Clear writing helps narrow issues, strengthen negotiating positions, and prepare a case for trial and appellate advocacy.
Property owners should also be cautious when disputes first arise. Emails, text messages, letters, and informal communications can later become evidence. Before making admissions or concessions, it is important to understand the underlying legal record.
Carey advises gathering documents early. Relevant documents often include deeds, surveys, plats, title commitments, permits, zoning records, association documents, correspondence, photographs, and historical materials.
Client Communication and Candor
In property matters, clients often contact an attorney after a problem has become urgent. A neighbor may have started construction near a disputed boundary. A dock may be placed in a contested area. A road may be blocked. A title concern may appear days before closing.
Carey’s approach emphasizes prompt attention, clear explanation, and practical next steps. Clients need to know what has been done, what remains pending, and what choices are available.
Candor is also central to the client relationship. Property disputes often involve uncertainty because old documents can be incomplete, language can be ambiguous, and facts can support competing interpretations.
Carey’s view is that clients are best served by realistic assessments of risk, cost, and likely outcomes. That communication helps clients make informed decisions.
Legal Strategy and Business Considerations
For developers and business owners, property issues rarely exist in isolation. Questions involving access, title, easements, zoning, or land use often affect financing, project schedules, operational planning, and overall investment value.
Carey brings both legal and business experience to these matters, having served in leadership and advisory roles involving governance, finance, compliance, contracts, risk management, and strategic planning. That experience informs his approach to property disputes and development projects, where legal issues are often intertwined with financing, operations, timelines, and business objectives.
In some situations, negotiated solutions provide the most practical path forward. In others, litigation may be necessary to protect property rights. Determining the appropriate course requires consideration of the governing documents, legal merits, timing, costs, and business objectives.
A Measured Approach To Property Disputes
Property disputes often involve issues that are deeply important to those involved. The dispute may concern a family cottage, a waterfront parcel, a business investment, or land that has been held for generations.
Carey’s approach to advocacy begins with understanding the record. That means carefully reviewing the relevant deeds, surveys, title history, plats, ordinances, restrictions, and governing law before forming conclusions.
Sometimes that review confirms a client’s assumptions. Sometimes it reveals strengths or weaknesses that were not initially apparent. In either case, informed decision-making depends upon understanding the documents before deciding on a course of action.
Not every dispute requires litigation. Many matters can be resolved through clarification of rights, negotiated agreements, or careful documentation. Others require court intervention to protect ownership, access, or use.
The objective is not simply to take action. It is to take the right action based upon the facts and the governing record.
Practical Guidance For Michigan Property Owners
Michigan property owners operate within a legal landscape shaped by water, land use regulation, historical records, and evolving development pressures. Whether purchasing property, evaluating a project, resolving a dispute, or protecting an existing investment, understanding the legal record remains essential.
Several practical principles apply across most property matters:
- Review governing documents before closing.
- Understand the distinction between access rights and ownership rights.
- Do not assume longstanding use automatically creates a legal right.
- Recognize that government approvals do not eliminate private property restrictions.
- Gather relevant records as soon as a dispute arises.
- Seek legal guidance before positions become entrenched.
Taking those steps early can help property owners protect value, avoid unnecessary conflict, preserve important rights, and make informed decisions about the use and ownership of property throughout Michigan.
