can someone tell me who pays the legal cost when the city want's to expropriate some of your land and your not in agreeance. They want to pay us less than the assesed value and we want to hire our own appraisal but they want us to pay for it we don't feel that we should have to. we would like to hire legal council but can't afford it and don't feel that we should have to pay for it ourselves seeing we are not the ones who want to sell but they tell us that we have to pay for that ourselves. Has anyone gone through this before? Do we really have to pay up front or is the city supposed to pay for the appraisal and legal council up front?