Can decades of shared history create a legal right to use a path, even without a recorded easement or dedication? Many older Michigan communities—summer resorts especially—were built up in pieces over 50, 100, or even 150 years, by different developers, under different owners, without one master document spelling out who can use which road or walkway. When a current owner blocks a long-used path, boards are often left asking: does years of use count for anything if there’s no paper trail? According to a recent Michigan Court of Appeals decision, the answer is no: recorded plats, deeds, and other legal documents—not community history or shared identity—are what create enforceable easement rights.
Macatawa Park Association v VA Properties, LLC, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued April 13, 2026 (Docket No. 396641) offers a detailed and instructive roadmap for how Michigan courts analyze competing claims to easements, common-law dedications, and prescriptive rights in a community that developed over more than 150 years.
How the Path Dispute in Macatawa Park Began
The dispute involves a peninsula between Lake Michigan and Lake Macatawa, home to the historic Macatawa Park summer resort near Holland, Michigan. Two main routes run the length of the peninsula—Lakeside Road on the west and Bay Road on the east—connected by a walkway. A separate path, North Walk, leads to a dock and, eventually, a historic lighthouse at the peninsula’s tip.
Macatawa Park was platted in 1888, with additional sections platted in 1890, 1895, and 1909. But the northern tip of the peninsula had a different history entirely. Starting in 1873, private owners conveyed that land to the federal government, which ran a lifesaving station there until about 1955. Because the government owned it, that parcel wasn’t part of the original 1888 plat and wasn’t platted at all until 1935, when it became its own subdivision, Heneveld’s Supervisor’s Plat No. 31 (“HS31”). The paths at the center of this case—Lakeside Way, North Walk, and the connector between them—all sit within HS31.
The conflict began in 2015, when the property owners in HS31 fenced off part of Lakeside Way during construction and never took the fence down. Tensions grew in 2021, when those owners staffed a guardhouse on Bay Road and blocked access to North Walk and the lighthouse. The Macatawa Park Association, along with two individual cottage owners from south of HS31, sued. Their position: every property owner in Macatawa Park, not just those within HS31, had a right to use the paths recreationally.
The Homeowners Association’s “One Unified Resort” Theory
The homeowners association’s core theory was that the original developers always intended the whole peninsula to function as a single summer resort and that this understanding had persisted for over a century regardless of who technically owned any given parcel. The Association submitted an impressive stack of historical evidence: local history books, an 1876 atlas once owned by the original landowner, and an 1891 promotional flyer touting the lifesaving station and lighthouse as attractions of the resort.
Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals rejected this theory, and their reasoning is the real lesson here for associations. Recorded plats and legal documents, not community history or shared identity, are what create enforceable property rights. As the trial court put it, it would not infer an easement from platting documents or historical sources that didn’t reflect the actual owners’ intent, nor from “secondhand evidence” or the simple fact that the roads and walkways were all connected across multiple plats.
An Easement’s Scope Doesn’t Automatically Expand to New Uses or New Plats
The homeowners association first pointed to a Michigan Supreme Court case Unverzagt v Miller,306 Mich 260; 10 NW2d 849 (1943), recognizing that Macatawa Park owners had an easement to use the resort’s private roads for ingress and egress and for delivery services. The Association argued this easement encompasses the right to use the paths.
The Court of Appeals rejected the Association’s argument for two reasons. First, the Unverzagt Court only referred to the original 1888 plat, which did not include the paths at issue, so there was no basis to conclude the easement’s scope extended to recreational foot traffic on those paths. Second, it was not apparent how recreational foot traffic was “reasonably necessary for the use and enjoyment of the easement.” Recreational walking to a lighthouse is a very different use than delivery services, and the court found no reason to stretch a delivery-focused ruling to cover it.
No Common-Law Private Dedication
The Association next argued the paths had been “dedicated” for community use. To prevail on a dedication theory, a claimant must show that the dedication appears in a recorded plat. If the dedication does not appear in a recorded plat, then the claim must establish:
- An intent of the property owner to offer the property for private use;
- Acceptance of the property owner’s offer by the beneficial user; and
- Maintenance and use of the property by the beneficial user.
With respect to the “intent” element, a claimant must show that the original owner “clearly express an intention to make a specific offer of dedication.” Choals v Plummer, 353 Mich 64, 70; 90 NW2d 851 (1958). clearly intended to offer the paths for shared use—not just that people used them.
Despite the historical materials, the homeowners association could not point to a single deed or document from an identifiable owner clearly expressing an intent to offer the paths for shared use. The Court of Appeals noted that the Association never even produced the title history for the parcels the paths sit on—a gap that proved fatal. Historical materials might help clarify the scope of a dedication that’s already been established, the court explained, but they can’t create one from scratch.
Implied Easements Require Unity of Title and Continuity
The Court of Appeals further rejected the Association’s “implied easement” argument, a legal shortcut that can apply when property was previously under common ownership and one part of it was clearly and continuously used to benefit another part.
This claim failed right out of the gate because the homeowners association had no evidence that the disputed paths were ever under common ownership with the properties south of HS31. The Court of Appeals also noted that a right of way like a footpath is not a “continuous” easement because using it requires someone to actually walk or drive on it each time. That technical distinction meant the implied-easement theory could not support what the Association really wanted: a permanent recreational easement right for every future owner in the community.
Court of Appeals Rejects Individual Owners’ Prescriptive Easement Claims
Separately, two individual cottage owners argued that their own decades of personal use had created prescriptive easements. the Court of Appeals stated that to establish a prescriptive easement, there must be a showing that an owner used the another property in a manner that was “open, notorious, adverse, and continuous for a period of fifteen years.” Plymouth Canton Comm Crier, Inc v Prose, 242 Mich App 676, 679; 619 NW2d 725 (2000). “A prescriptive easement inherently requires trespassing on private property.” Macatawa, supra at 8.
Both claims failed on the same element: adverse. The Court of Appeals relied on a long-standing rule that when a property owner improves a path and leaves it open for others’ convenience, that use is treated as permissive, not adverse. The evidence showed the HS31 owners had continually improved the paths (repaving, seawalls, stairs, dune stabilization) while generally tolerating recreational visitors and only turning away disruptive ones. Because the paths were left open to the wider community rather than restricted, the individual owners’ use looked just like everyone else’s—not enough to prove the paths were used adversely.
What Macatawa Park Means for Michigan Community Associations
Macatawa Park reinforces principles that matter for any historic or multi-phase Michigan community, particularly summer resort associations governed by one of Michigan’s summer resort statutes. Courts will look to recorded plats, deeds, and other legal documents to determine easement and dedication rights. Long, friendly, uninterrupted use of a path or road is also unlikely to support a prescriptive easement claim if the record shows that use was tolerated or permissive rather than adverse.
Key Takeaways for Condominium and Homeowners Associations
- Recorded documents control. Courts will look to plats, deeds, and other recorded instruments to determine property rights.
- Purpose of an easement is critical. Courts are unlikely to expand the scope of easements when the purpose of the easement is not undermined.
- Common-law private dedication requires clear grantor intent. Associations relying on an unrecorded dedication should be prepared to show a clear, identifiable expression of intent to dedicate rather than mere decades of shared use.
- Implied easements require unity of title. Without evidence that disputed property was ever commonly owned with the benefited parcels, an implied easement claim will likely fail.
- Improving and tolerating access can defeat a prescriptive easement. If an owner improves a path and generally leaves it open to others, courts are likely to treat that access as permissive, which forecloses a hostility-based prescriptive claim.
- Title histories matter. HOAs pursuing or defending easement claims involving older, multi-phase developments should invest early in researching the chain of title for the specific parcels at issue.
Michigan’s historic lakefront and summer resort communities often carry more than a century of overlapping plats, additions, and informal customs. When disputes arise over shared paths, roads, or other rights of way, associations need experienced counsel who can trace the relevant title history and evaluate whether an enforceable easement or dedication actually exists. If your condominium or homeowners association is facing a dispute over access rights, easements, or shared paths, contact the experienced Michigan community association lawyers at Hirzel Law, PLC.
