So this weekend I was thinking about the relationship of leasing land to hunt. Say you have inherited a cabin from previous people that are no longer on the lease. The current lease members own the cabin on someone else's land (obvious). Hypothetically if the land sells (and no current lease members want said cabin). What next? 1. Buyer keeps cabin. 2. Buyer asks lease members to remove. If example 2 happens, what liability do current lease members have to expel resources to remove the cabin. Go.

If it was there before you leased it I would assume it is the landholders cabin. You don't own anything on another persons land unless it is in writing from the owner of the cabin and the landowner giving it to you. Then either get it gone or give it to the landowner. If he wants it gone then good luck.

Well, simple, what does the lease agreement say about said cabin?

The cabin belongs to the landowner and now buyer unless there is a written agreement otherwise. Fixed improvements to realty become a part of the realty. If no written agreement you have no duty as lessees to remove it.

Yep, gotta read the docs. Absent a written contract spelling out responsibilities, the cabin has attached to the real estate and is now the property (and responsibility) of the new landowner.

Is the cabin portable, as in a portable building designed to be moved?

Yes, considered a leasehold improvement and conveyed to buyer unless as mentioned before there is a written exclusion in the contract.

Here is another caveat to throw at ya....if the leasor (prior owner) had no written contract but a verbal contract with the leases over said building, but the selling agreement stated all improvements stay and not specifying about the cabin, then doesn't matter what the handshake agreement was the new contract between the prior owner and current owner would supersede previous agreements.

It would need to be spelled out in the buying contract that the cabin belonged to leases and they would either 1. assign it over to buyer, 2. sell it to buyer, or 3. remove it from property prior to closing or within a period of time agreed to by the buyer.

If none of that is spelled out in the sales contract, then the cabin is as good as the buyers and there isn't anything you can do to change that.

If I was the one who owned the said property then I would own the building if whoever put it there is no longer the party that leases it and did not move it when his lease expired. My property and now my building. I could give a rats rear end what transpired between the original lease holders and the new ones.

This is one of the main reasons that we don't lease our place to hunt any longer. I've got a little over 46K acres in the Rocksprings area, purchased in 4K to 6K blocks at a time. Back in the 1980's when I purchased the first segment of the place there was an old house on it. During the discussions with the previous land owner I was never made aware of the fact that a group guys out of Dallas had leased the hunting rights to the place from him for over 30 years. I purchased it during the summer which meant back then that no hunting activity was going on. Due diligence research by my broker proved that there no liens or encumbrances on the property. The sales contract stated that any and all improvements came with the purchase of the property. He even sold me all of his tractors, ranch vehicles and all other equipment associated with the place as he wanted to get completely out of the ranching business and would no longer have a need for it.
After signing the contract the first thing that I did was have the place high fenced and the entrance gate redone with heavy limestone rock and a new solar powered iron gate with an electronic combination entry code system. I wanted to import exotics on the place and did not want them jumping fence.
Just after all of the fence work was completed my ranch foreman called me to come out to the front gate as there were some guys there threatening to shoot him if we didn't let them on their place. First thing I did was call the sheriff and then headed to the front gate.
What greeted me was a very angry group of 8 men that had come down to "work" on their place" for the weekend. I informed them that I had purchased the place a few months earlier and I had no clue who they were and what made them think that they had any right on my property.
At this point the deputy drove up and they calmed down a bit. As the discussion proceeded they told me about that had a lease on the property that went back over 30 years. I informed that that the lease had never been mentioned during the negotiation process or in the sales contract and therefore i was not responsible abiding by it. Then they inquired about there personal property on the ranch and I informed them that the sales contracted conveyed ownership of any on the ranch to me upon purchases. They proceeded to produce a copy of a hand written "contract" that was dated about 20 years ago as "proof" of their claims. I told them that we had moved all of their out of the house when we cleaned it out and taken anything that we couldn't use to the dump. I had also sold the excess vehicles to a used car dealer. Unfortunately all that would have left were their stands and we had dismantled those.
Long story short they tried to sue me but had no legal means to do so as I was not bound by the contract and was unaware that they even existed prior to purchasing the ranch.
They ended up having to pay my legal expenses and tried to sue the original land owner. Nasty mess that could have been completely avoided. If I had known about the "leasing" arrangement I would have contacted them and worked out a deal for them to come and retrieve their property. As it was I acted in good faith based upon what information I had been given.
Now, only my family friends are allowed to hunt the place.

That's strange that a guy who had that long of a contract in place didn't disclose a lease of that magnitude to you. Sounds like he wanted out from under it, probably some personal conflicts with those guys.

My guess a little different. My guess is that he did not want anything at all to ruin the possible selling of his ranch and so did not disclose it.

Wonder what the outcome of the lawsuit was? I find it hard to believe that anyone would ever write a lease to someone that gave them rights for over 20 years unless part of the lease required the hunters to build a house or something incredibly expensive, so the extended duration was part of the deal.

Maybe a bit different, but when I purchased my place, the seller had some cattle, a stock trailer, ATV, and a blind still on the property. He asked, and we agreed, to provide a written document, that was part of closing, that he had 30 days to remove all of this from the property. He actually got it all done in about a week.

In reality, I would have let him come and get his stuff without the Agreement, but without it, he had no protection from my simply changing the locks on the gate and telling him he was SOL.

I'm no legal expert, but my understanding is that when you take AS IS ownership, it is exactly that, AS IS unless you agree in writing to some stipulation.

It is my understanding that these guys had a gentleman's agreement with the previous owner based upon a handshake and a handwritten note that was not even notarized. As my attorney told me, we didn't know if the previous land owner was even aware that a note existed. What ever the arrangement, it worked well for them for many years. Not really sure why he did not tell them that he was selling but at the point I did not care what his reasons were. If I had known ahead of time I would have worked with them and allowed them to remove what they could. As far as the house goes, I considered it part of the property based upon our sales contract.
As it was, by the time I found out that they even existed I had taken steps to clean up the property and much of their property was no longer recoverable.
As far as the law suite against the previous land owner goes, I was called in to testify that I had no prior knowledge of their relationship and to give testimony on how the purchase process was conducted and what information was revealed to me during the process. Never heard the results of the trail though.

How did you sale the vehicles without titles?

Sold them as salvage. Most of them were older vehicles that the seller told me had not run in years and had just been sitting around collecting dust. Found a junkyard that agreed to come get them and paid me several hundred dollars apiece for them. All I was trying to do was clean the place up and get rid of the old junk that he had laying around. This included old farm equipment, rusted tin sheets, old feeders, old deer stands, much more; and of course old vehicles. As I stated earlier, everything that I did was predicated by the sales contract and what the seller told us.