Clearing title for land bought in cash
This story may be long and I'll do what I can to summarize. Here's the scenario. I purchased a piece of property with cash. It was my very first time purchasing property with cash and I thought it would speed things up. Many title companies stated that they couldn't do the deal but one title company sent us to a lawyer who said they could. That lawyer drew up a General Warranty Deed and received a limited title certificate, we signed and paid the seller directly. The seller believed it was his property because his mother quit claimed the property to her children and all of the children quitclaimed their piece of the property to him. The Warranty Deed is filed and we get the deed back. We are happy.
The property is in a flood zone and I wanted to use my own contractors to build my first home on the property. I even had an architect draw out a home for me. Because it's in a flood zone, we have to do engineering drawings and flood mitigation plans. This takes months to accomplish and out of pocket expenses. After this is complete, we started working on finding the contractors and they proved to be unreliable. This caused me to scrap that idea and go with a builder. The builder looked at the plans I had drawn up and told me the house was going to cost me over 300k to build. So I scrapped that plan and went with a smaller plan. We agreed and started moving through the process. When the process gets to title, the title company says that the title is not clear even though I have the general warranty deed. Process is halted to prove that the land belongs to the guy I bought it from. Turns out the seller's father never went through probate. So in reality, the property never completely belong to his mother in the first place. Monkey wrench. I go back to the seller for my money but it's been too long. He's spent it and taking him to court wouldn't avail much. All of his money is tied up in retirement accounts. Can't garnish that in Texas. On to the hunt.
Sellers step-father died in 1981 and the seller doesn't know if he had any siblings or if this was his first marriage. There's no way to really prove he didn't have another family or kids, which sounds really weird to me to try to prove. I don't even know how I would prove that. We subscribe to ancestry.com and research the family like crazy without finding anything. I get with an attorney who says we can get some proof of heir ship documents from the sellers siblings, but we're still having problems closing. My attorney states if this doesn't work, then we'll just have to an adverse possession. We would have to fence the property in for 3 years and then file the papers. Now to the questions.
Is this my only course of action? Why are lawyers so expensive when they don't get the desired result at times? I paid the attorney to draw up the proof heirship documents and get them signed, her idea, but the title company still didn't accept it.
What would you do?