I wish to know some things about a tenant in common wanting…

The council offered to buy part of her farm, she agreed and they took possesion of a potion and widened a road, but she was never paid for her land.

She in response, stopped paying the rates and rather than negotiate with her they simply put caveats on her farm and may sell due to non payment of rates

Here is an overview from her

shire approached us January 2001 wanting a corner of our land (about ½ acre) to widen a road on the Gypsum Truck Route, we agreed but no price settled on yet.

2. To our amazement, road works started within a week with no more contact with us from shire.

3. We contacted the shire and said, , where is the contract, that comes first.

4. Shire said it's coming, should not be long.

Sent us a letter offering shire value for the ½ acre (around $110) we refused saying this was for a road update, we want $1000, they agreed and said all legal costs, title changes, and fences etc would be replaced at shire's cost.

5. We found out a while later the shire actually took more land then they told us, without our permission.

6. Road works finished 6 weeks later, still no contract. Asked again...got told should not be much longer.

7. Waited 18 months for contract, drawn up by shires solicitor

( possible conflict of interest to have shires solicitor draw it up as contract was all shires way

) in the meantime sent shire bills and added interest which they never paid. Said there was an agreement for $1000 and that's all we can ask.

8. We signed the contract to get it over with. Then a short time later the Plan of Subdivision comes along for us to sign, we thought this very strange and just left it lying on the kitchen bench for a few days.

Then along comes a letter from shire's solicitor requesting a letter from us with permission for shire to buy the land...red flags went up after that, something big was wrong with the whole affair.

Never ever signed Plan of Subdivision, so titles never been changed and we have never been paid.

9. Decided not to pay rates as shire had not paid us for our land, went on for a while until shire got an Order against us from Magistrates Court, still never paid the rates so shire puts Caveat over the whole farm (four titles) as well as bad credit report with Veda and Dun & Bradstreet.

10. Got letter from shire last Sept 2010 saying they would sell us up Oct 2010 if rates were not paid.

11. Found out from Melbourne solicitors for shire that contract was now null and void, need new one drawn up.

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Your reply is helpful.

However there is another reason she would like a caveat registered with the Victorian titles office.

The question here is

Would the titles Office look at her case as you have done and make a decision, or would they simply acept her caveat and let the council seek to have it lifted in court if they can find reasons to do so.?

If they rejected her caveat - surely they would be acting like legal experts rather than merely public servants ?

That is very helpful

This lady is not very financial at the moment, if we wanted to draw up our own caveat

are their guidelines we can check to ensure that is proper and correct