Land Conservancy
For over four decades, Barnard, Mezzanotte, Pinnie, Seelaus, LLP has regularly advised on land conservancy issues that allow landowners to protect their property forever. A conservation easement allows a landowner to own and manage their property while restricting its use to protect the property’s significant natural, agricultural, scenic, and open space resources. This is accomplished by a landowner granting legal limitations on the use of the land to a nonprofit organization (a “land trust”) or governmental entity authorized to enforce the terms of the conservancy easement. In addition, many financial benefits are available to landowners with a land conservancy easement.
Strategic Counseling and Practical Advice
Our counseling focuses on avoiding pitfalls and strategically resolving issues that arise with practical advice and support. We work with individuals and a broad spectrum of businesses, from small, family-owned companies to large corporate entities. Our goal is to develop a deep, long-term relationship with our clients so that we are uniquely positioned to help them not only meet their immediate needs, but also achieve their long-term goals.
We provide seasoned counsel in the following areas:
- Creating an overall strategic approach to land conservancy
- Review easement documents and provide advice
- Planning, preparing and filing conservation easements
- Modifying conservation easements
- Identification and enforcement of conservation easement violations
- Interpretation of the restrictive covenants of a conservation easement
- Advise on financial benefits of a conservation easement
We also litigate in the following areas:
- Enforcement of conservation easement violations
- Interpretation of conservation easement restrictive covenants