Allan M. Michelson

Attorney for Chippewa Lake

The Answer is Yes.

The Question: Are my lake rights good if the Park District (or anyone else) buys the lake? This is the question I heard most often in Chippewa until the failure of the sales tax this Spring. But, the question won’t go away, because eventually someone will buy the lake and the park property.

Of course, lawyers can’t give simple answers, and the answer is really not that simple.

The legal history begins in 1890 when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Chippewa Lake is privately owned. That decision still stands and this means that any rights you have in the lake must come from old deeds which the lake owner must honor.

Lake rights or "deed rights" exist because they were spelled out in one of the early deeds to your property from a developer to the first private owner. They don’t appear written in your current deed, but they are valid if they are found in an old deed to your property to a previous owner. This makes them part of your "chain of title" which any later owner of the property can enforce. So, to understand what your rights are, your title must be traced back to the old deed that created the rights in the first place. These deeds do vary in what they give owners. In fact, there are some lots that do not have lake rights, because they were transferred from a developer by quitclaim deed without the language giving lake rights. I know there are a few lots like this in Briarwood. Sometimes only a title search can determine if lake rights were given to one of your preceding owners.

If the rights are in your deed chain, there are conditions.

First, if your deed requires annual lake rights fees, these must be paid to legally enjoy use of the lake. Some deeds require a payment of $5.00 per year to the owner of the lake. If this applies to your deed, and hasn’t been paid, call Chippewa Lake Properties, Inc. right away to try to make arrangements to pay up and "reinstate" your rights. In the past, the lake owner has agreed to this in specific cases. Whether or not the lake owner can be forced to reinstate rights or honor unpaid rights at all, are open questions that haven’t been decided in our courts yet.

Second, even if there is no fee for your rights, there is a catch.

Some deeds state you can use "one row boat and one motor boat of 12 mph speed." Other deeds state that you and your guests can "go upon and into the waters of Chippewa Lake with row boat, with canoe, to bathe, to fish, to skate and to use the waters of said lake for any reasonable purposes."

In the past, the owner of the lake has taken the position that if your deed allows you only a row boat or a canoe or a 12 mph motorboat, that is the extent of your rights. This is why the owner charged a special fee in order to put a ski boat on the lake. The argument is that to use another boat you must be granted a special privilege by the owner of the lake and the owner can charge for that privilege.

You can argue, that "any reasonable purpose" should include any boat, or that you have acquired a right by using other boats. But these points have not been decided yet in court.

If you want to be certain that the rights you have will survive the sale of the lake or transfer of the property, you first need to find out exactly what rights were spelled out in your chain of title. Then, you should take steps to reinstate those rights if you haven’t paid the required annual fee. The question of exactly how far those rights now go is still an open question.