Resident is stuck in the middle

COHASSET - When the Greenbush commuter rail line opens late this month, it will mean a new way to get home for an estimated 4,000 people along the South Shore.

But for Rose Collins, it could mean never getting home again, thanks to a bureaucratic nightmare that has left her without a legal driveway in and out of her house on the Cohasset-Scituate line.

The 20-year, $513 million Greenbush project has become legendary for the concessions MBTA officials have made to placate neighbors upset about the return of the trains, including deluxe wrought-iron fencing, "critter crossings" under the tracks for wildlife, and a $30 million tunnel through Hingham Square. But Collins, who has been a second-grade teacher in Cohasset for more than 30 years, is one person living along the Greenbush line who has not been helped by the T, officials in the two towns, or state legislators who have taken up her cause.

Two years ago, Collins's old driveway to South Main Street was bisected, Jersey-barriered, and fenced off when construction crews restored the Greenbush tracks. Meaning to help her, MBTA contractors built Collins a new stretch of driveway on the other side of her lot, connecting to a lane in Scituate. The T hired a local lawyer to handle the details for Collins.

That is where the trouble began. T officials maintain that Collins's old driveway, the one they shut off, was never legal to begin with. But the new one they built her is illegal twice over, local officials say.

The Scituate lane to which the new Collins driveway connects is already shared by three residences. Scituate zoning laws ban adding a fourth without a a zoning variance. But the Scituate neighbors' common driveway required buying an easement right to cross land owned by neighbors just over the town line in Cohasset. Those Cohasset neighbors have not agreed to let Collins use their land, citing Scituate zoning. Without the easement, no variance; without the variance, no easement.

Collins has no idea how long she can keep driving in and out of her property before facing legal action. Unless the situation is resolved, lawyers say, she fears she and her former husband, Peter, can never sell the house, a shingled Cape with a glassed-in porch and red-door barn assessed at $754,400.

Collins's nightmare does not end there. While all the houses involved are less than 200 yards apart, Cohasset and Scituate are in two different counties, Norfolk and Plymouth. Unsnarling the fiasco requires trips to the registries of deeds in Dedham and Plymouth, 40 miles apart.

And now the T is refusing to do anything more to help.

"If you look at it from a legal standpoint, it's an amazing Catch-22," says Peter Flynn, a Saugus real estate lawyer who has been working with Collins and says he can think of few messier cases he has dealt with in nearly 40 years practicing land law. "It's a quagmire."

Collins declined requests sent through her lawyers for an interview, and friends say she is distraught over the mess.

MBTA officials say they have already gone to extraordinary lengths to try to rescue the Collins family from a legal disaster they created in the first place.

"It is not a T matter," said spokesman Joe Pesaturo. "This was a case of trespassing for years. Now she has to identify a legal way of entering and exiting her property with town officials and her neighbors."

MBTA lawyers researching deeds said the Collinses never had the legal right with their old driveway to cross over the Greenbush branch, which last saw passenger trains in 1959 and was abandoned and then taken over by the town and, in the early 2000s, by the T. Several years ago the Collins family sold land on the west side of their lot that became a subdivision of $1 million houses on Ledgewood Farm Drive, effectively boxing themselves in, T lawyers contended.

With the Greenbush price tag already over the half-billion-dollar mark, some local officials think the T might feel pressure to avoid shelling out several hundred thousand dollars more to resolve the Collinses' plight.

Tom Gruber, a Cohasset engineer who serves as the town's representative to the Greenbush project, said one way the T could resolve the issue would be to use its eminent-domain authority to seize either a sliver of Cohasset land for Collins to use as a driveway or force neighbors to sell her an easement on the existing driveway and then negotiate the Scituate variance to make it fully legal.

"The MBTA complicated a situation, attempted to resolve it, and then walked away," said state Senator Robert L. Hedlund, a Weymouth Republican who has tried repeatedly to broker meetings to resolve the situation.

Jackie Collari, one of Collins's neighbors on the driveway Collins now uses, agreed.

"The T basically decided to walk away from it and leave her stranded," Collari said. "They truly cut her off from the town of Cohasset."

Collari, who with her husband, Robert, has compiled a 5-inch-thick folder of maps and correspondence relating to the saga, said neighbors are eager to help Collins out of her predicament, but want to be sure there is clear legal paperwork that does not put any cloud over their houses and driveway when the time comes to sell.

"I love Rose; she's great," said Collari. "We have no problem with her using the driveway. We just want it all done right by the lawyers."

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.