On 12/22/2018 10:48 AM, trader_4 wrote:
....

I should have added, if you're going to pay for this meter install, you
should get an agreement in writing with the neighbor to split the cost.
And that the other half of the problem is even if you measure the electric
used by the pump, how does the cost get split? You'd have to meter the
water too, to divide the cost accurately. And I'm betting that some
fixed arrangement, like 80/20 or 70/30, won't be acceptable to the neighbor.
They will probably want it split 50/50. I'd get how it's going to be
split into the written agreement too, before shelling out money.

People do the dumbest things because they happen to know them at the
time and don't think through what will happen eventually "on down the road".

Place up the road from us is similar situation, was working farmstead
back years ago; the principal died at very young age and the widow
moved, selling off the (almost new at the time) house and outbuildings
from the farm ground -- about 15-20 A tract out of the corner of the
half-section.

Anyway, some time later the new owner sold off a corner of that tract
that included the metal-building shed to another fella' and he moved his
business into it and put a decent mobile home down permanently as residence.

Lo! and behold! about six months after the new fella' was established,
the main property owner came home from work in town one evening to
discover he had no water...the tract he sold turned out to include the
well and the new dude had cut the pipe off at the well feeding the other
property.

Howling like a banshee did him no good, he'd sold it fair and square and
hadn't had the foresight to say anything in the contract about future
water rights...I never did learn whether he didn't have any legal advice
on the contract or whether he did it all on his own or whether he just
didn't bother to mention the well to the lawyer...

This fella' here shoulda' never brought the property without first
getting a legally-enforceable agreement on the water rights and
expenses...if he wanted the property badly enough to forego that, then
as you say, he should just plan on either a major legal battle to
establish those rights for what will continue always be a bad situation
or just "bite the bullet" and drill his own well and be shut of it.

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