Fraudulent agreement put us in deep poop!

I am the mother of three amazing children, ages 6, 2, and 4 months.  We recently moved from the Pittburgh area to the Richmond, VA area.  We purchased our first home, which is incredibly modest and needs lots of work.  We knew the house was a fixer-upper when we looked at it, but according to the inspection we would be able to handle everything ourselves.  We are both pretty handy and my husband has an amazing knack for learning how to fix things, so we weren't worried.  We've been slowly chipping away at things that need fixed like insulating and minor plumbing and roof work.  Its a slow project because of finances.  Anyway, my brother-in-law was helping us with our yard work when we discovered a wet spot in the dirt that would not dry, where we had dumped some dirt into a weed filled hole.  Keep in mind, this was during a major drout.  We decided to dig the spot up to see what was causing it.  We discovered a world of trouble.  The wetness was sewage.  Initially we thought maybe we damaged a pipe connecting the septic tank to the distribution box, then we discovered there was no distribution box!  Further more, there was no drainfield!  We had a septic designer and inspector check our property and he confirmed what we had found, he also confirmed that because of the layout of our property and a right of way through it, there was no way of putting one on our property.  At this point we are amazed that we have sewage running from our septic tank, through a concrete pipe, into a ditch onto my neighbors vacant property.  This was originally all one family's property, and apparently that's when this set up was done. 

This leads me to the legal issue that has now been created.  When we agreed to purchase this house, we and the seller signed a purchase agreement.  That agreement stated that the seller had the septic tank inspected and pumped, the distribution box inspected and the drainfield inspected.  Now, we had a completely Full septic tank, no distribution box and no drainfield.  Obviously the seller commited some fraud here.  This fraud has put us in a situation where the county could condemn our house, and my family runs a serious risk of getting sick from having raw sewage in the back yard.  we have been pursuing this matter but have run out of options at the moment.  We need a lawyer to help us.  The realtor that sold it to us was also the owner.  We have made him aware of the situation and he keeps playing dumb.  I think he assumes that we are stupid first time home buyers and we aren't going to press the issue.  We have to though.  Because we can't put a drainfield on our property, we have to make a deal with the owner of the other property to have an easement to put it on.  Between that and the tens of thousands it will cost to have it designed and builtwe are in serious trouble!  I think the seller should lose his lisence and have to pay minimally to put the system in  because of his fraudulant behavior.  Legal help is the biggest thing we need right now.I haven't been able to find anyone who will take us on pro bono.  We can't afford to pay a lawyer because I just had to quit my job .  It was pointless for me to work when all I was doing was paying someone else to raise my kids and clearing little more than that. Now I can spend time with my children and our income isn't affected.  This also allows me to put more time into fixing this situation. It was very hard to work on as a retail manager putting in ridiculous hours.  Anyway, I welcome advice or assistance in any way.  We have been struggling financially since before we moved here and thought we were entering a better situation when we bought this house.  Boy, were we wrong!  I would just like to know that I'm not going to lose our house because of using our mortgage money to pay a lawyer, we have a hard enough time making the payments as it is.  Thank you for reading this!

danyzmom