How does such a thing exist? How is it someone can just TAKE your property without compensation? I don’t care if I’ve never visited the land that I own. I OWN it. It’s mine and I don’t see how someone can just take it by setting up camp on it for some period of time. Makes no sense to me.
**No, this hasn’t happened to me. I just read about it and thought WTH?!?
Typically, for adverse possession to happen in the US, you have to do so visibly and the owner has to know about it and make no effort to do anything about it and the period of time is incredibly long for most jurisdictions. You can’t just hide in someone’s house and when they find you, you claim squatter’s rights. Typically, it would be a situation where the owner has basically abandoned the property for a long period of time and they know you are there and don’t seem to care. Most adverse possession is small property line disputes. You put up a fence a foot over the property line and your neighbor doesn’t do anything about it for a decade and then suddenly decides to tear it down is a normal thing or a driveway that nips a corner of their property or something similar.
Most descriptions of Adverse Possession list 5 requirements (it varies by state):
[ol]
[li]Actual Possession[/li][li]Hostile Possession[/li][li]Open and Notorious Use[/li][li]Continuous Use[/li][li]Exclusive Use[/li][/ol]
The time periods vary by state as well.
This puts the onus on the property owner to at least survey the property periodically to determine if anyone else is using it, and to take action if found.
This is an old law after all. Its original intention was to keep public land from falling into disuse. People would just grab up huge acreage on speculation and do nothing with it. This gave a person who did want to actually use the land an opportunity.
Dennis
There was a case recently in Australia which from memory went like this. The owner died around 1947. The “squatter” - who is really a rather wealthy land owner states he come across the property and installed new doors and rented it out. Over time he refurbished the kitchen and did more upkeep.
In the meantime the family had no knowledge of the house. The squatter filed a claim for the house and that is when the family were alerted.
Court result was that the squatter retained the house which is now worth several million dollars. Family not happy (understandably).
I remember a case from (I think) England kind of like that. The situation was, a man was renting a mansion from a landlord. The mansion was in pretty bad shape: leaking ceilings, drafts, bad floors, and so forth. The renter kept bringing up the problems to the landlord, but the landlord kept ignoring the requests for repairs; I think he didn’t want to put any more money into the dilapidated old place. The renter stopped paying rent to the landlord to try to force the issue, but the landlord still didn’t do anything. This went on for, I believe, 20 years, and finally the tenant filed for ownership by adverse possession, since the owner knew he was occupying the property without paying rent but never evicted him. Finally, the landlord woke up and objected, but the court ruled for the tenant, and he was the proud new owner of a POS mansion.
Not quite obtaining property through adverse possession but more to “squatter’s rights” is when someone moves into your house while you’re not there. Since you as the owner cannot prove there is no lease (can’t prove a negative) to the police they obtain renter rights to stay until you can convict them through the courts. Yes there are cases of people who are forced to live with the non-paying squatters.
Why wouldn’t you just shoot them as an intruder?
I think if you’re paying property/land taxes yearly you’re safe from this type of bullshit. We have a corner of land that crosses a county road. Every time we had a survey done we’ve had to tell the surveyors about it. We pay taxes on it, no way are we gonna let go just because it crosses a road. It abuts state land, so no neighbor dispute.
I wouldn’t be so certain.
Maybe the taxes would protect from losing the entire property, but stuff like driveways taking a corner might still happen.
I live on a fairly small suburban NJ lot, and my fence is about a foot on my neighbor’s side of the property line. I have lived here and used that foot of property for over 20 years, and that fence predates me. It is clearly my fence, since the neighbor has a different style of fence.
I’m pretty confident that if I had a serious need for that slice of property (and the desire to be a jerk) I might be able to keep it forever through the appropriate legal action.
I don’t see how this invalidates any of the 5 principles outlined above.
Sounds like a healthy lawsuit against the executor (if it were more recent).
I thought all Australian states were on Torrens, which élimantes adverse possession?
I’ve also heard of footpaths becoming public property because they were left available for so long. Not something likely to happen in a city because there’s usually plenty of other access available.
I don’t think the public can gain property like that, but it is possible to establish a easement or right of way that allows for access and use permanently. You will occasionally see property owners putting up a physical barrier once a year to establish that they still retain control over the property.
Where I lived in college was a private way at the end of a public street. The owners would block the street once a year to make sure a permanent easement wasn’t granted to other users. I have no idea if that is required or sufficient to do so.
Or tip off the cops that there are drugs on the property so they get hauled off for possession. I keep a couple kilos of cocaine in the crawlspace for just such an eventuality.
And lose your house to asset forfeiture in the process.
The answer from a public policy viewpoint is that unused property is useless. The principle was established hundred of years ago that you had to actually use a plot of land to keep possession of it. If you buggered off and nobody could find you, the land would revert to the King, or whoever was working the land.
In a different but analogous policy, many lands were entailed. You might own a castle because you’re the heir to the Barony of Nonesuch, but you weren’t allowed to sell the castle just because you owned it. It didn’t belong to you, it belonged to the Baron of Nonesuch, and you just happened to be the current Baron. That didn’t give you the right to sell the property. Or, if you worked the land as a serf you couldn’t just be evicted because the lord of the manor decided to go into wool rather than wheat. You had a right to work the land even if you didn’t own the land.
Yes, this seems antithetical to our modern free-market principles. However, our system of laws did not evolve from free-market principles, it evolved from earlier conceptions of proper land stewardship.
Shouldn’t the onus be on the squatter to prove there was a lease? Otherwise what would stop anyone from claiming to have a lease on any property.
The owner doesn’t have to prove there was never a lease in an eviction action - but as a general rule the police are not going to make someone leave a house on-the-spot except under circumstances that make it very obvious that they never had the owner’s permission to be there. They aren’t going to get involved in whether the person had a lease and refused to leave at the end, or whether there was a month-to-month tenancy with no written lease or whether the “squatter” was living as a member of the owner’s household and the owner no longer wants them there or whether the squatter moved in without permission six months ago while the owner was on an extended vacation. Doesn’t matter- if it doesn’t look to the police like the intruder broke in recently, they will send you to court. Even if the onus is put on the squatter to prove they have a lease, the police are not going to make a decision on a civil issue.
if you read the article, you’ll see that the squatter had previously had a lease for that house, had changed the locks and therefore had the keys and had been staying there for months. Can’t see how the police can be expected to immediately determine that she was a squatter rather than a month-to-month tenant who the landlord wanted out.