Either the attorney is wrong, or you misunderstood her. Wisconsin does not derogate from the common law in this regard.
You may have been confused by the language of the statute (W.S. 893.25), which provides that an adverse possessor may initiate an action to establish title (basically, request a declaratory judgment) after the 20 year period.
After reviewing what you linked to before, I’m going with “you misunderstood her”, since she explains that title vests automatically in her article:
[emphasis added]
In a nation like the US the law is mostly a voluntary matter. People are used to not taking the law into their own hands and physically enforcing the law in a society where there are lots of procedural rights takes enormous legal resources.
Trespassing is not a crime?
It seems to me that if its legal to put up fences and have signs that says that trespassers will be shot, and things like the castle doctrine in some states, it should be legal to go into your own property and shoot anyone who doesn’t leave
maybe you misunderstood. After the time is up, any action by the original owner is too little too late. The owner attempting to assert their rights before the time (10 or 20 years) is up, interrupts the averse possession.
Basically, squatting to obtain title is claiming “the original owner has effectively abandoned this property, and I have acted like I owned it”. By trying to reclaim the property (and following through) before the time limit, the owner is proving this is not the case.
The cases relating to the OP about why the police don’t do anything, certainly rarely qualify. The squatters are taking advantage of slow and ineffective eviction procedures to stretch out free occupancy as long as possible. As long as the true owner is fighting to assert their rights, the squatters are not building up squatter rights credits.
I didn’t misunderstand. What you posted initially is a misstatement of the law. It’s not sufficient for the original owner to assert his rights. He must do so successfully. Though that appears to be what you are getting at further down in the post.
From the quote, it appears that a simple “petition for registration of land title” if successful, will interrupt possession; although I’m not sure what this means if the true owner already has title. Would they keep registering it over and over?
I assume winning an injunction is meaningless if the follow through (enforcing the injunction) is not also acted on?
After all, if the simple title owner asserts his rights and the courts deny him the rights or any relief, might as well write off the value of law. I’m trying to imagine a case where someone with valid title cannot evict a person - eventually - who has no legal basis to occupy a property.
The most cases that have come up are when the tenant has a valid lease and has been paying rent. Or at least they believe in good faith that they have a valid lease. But after further investigation they have been scammed by a third party over Craigs List or some other site.
[QUOTE=urban1a]
I wonder if it is like that in most places in the world.
Bob
[/QUOTE]
It’s not like that in common law jurisdictions which have enacted the Torrens system of land title, which is based on the fundamental principle that ownership is as shown on title. There’s no such thing as adverse possession in those jurisdictions.
Interesting that Australia would be the place where that idea developed.
According to Wikipedia:
I am not a lawyer either, but the above agrees with what my father and mother (retired lawyers) told me when the issue came up regarding nearby property, and I believe it agrees completely with what I said above.
Good point.
There is, or was, a reality TV show about a service that handles evictions. It was pretty interesting. The guy who runs the service basically knows the laws, knows what he can get away with, isn’t above showing some muscle, but generally tries to simply get folks to move out amicably – usually by paying them to just go away, saving the owner because it’s considerably less than it’d cost him in laywers’ fees and lost rent. It was pretty interesting, but not the kind of thing I was interested in watching more than once.
But if you’re interested in this kind of thing, and if someone can think of the show name, it definitely gives you a good idea of the range of circumstances and some of the legal aspects.
Was it World’s Worst Tenants?
You do not have the legal right to shoot trespassers. Where did you get the idea that you do?
The “castle doctrine” doesn’t mean that a homeowner has the right to shoot at people on his property. He still only has the right to use deadly force in self-defense. The only difference is that in most cases you have a duty to retreat if possible. That means if you think your life is danger, but you can get in your car and drive away, you don’t have the right to shoot someone instead, self defense doesn’t apply if you have other reasonable methods of protecting yourself.
All the castle doctrine (in localities where it applies) does is assert that you can claim self defense in your own home even if you had an opportunity to retreat but didn’t take it.
No one has the legal right to use deadly force against trespassers. You can put up a sign saying that you’ll shoot trespassers on sight, that sign does not give you the legal right to do so, and could be used as evidence against you at your murder trial.
Then we are beyond my level of expertise. I will attempt to contact the speaker (I don’t have direct access, but I think I can reach her) and see what she says. Give me a few days.
Trespassing can be a crime if the local authorities want to pursue it as a crime. They don’t have the resources. The lawful possessor of the property can pursue a civil case for trespassing.
IIRC IANAL Ontario and several other provinces have instituted a (computerized) land registry system. The law says it is the ultimate authority on title. This lead to some unfortunate results - one court case involved mortgage fraud. Someone impersonated the owner and took out a mortgage, then disappeared. The court said if the legislature had meant to exclude fraud they would have put it in the law, so the owners still had to pay a bogus mortgage. A few cases later this was changed. No more squatters rights.
The eviction cases are usually legit tenants but possibly intended, from the start or due to circumstances, to no longer pay rent. “Squatter” to me means someone, like the Canadian Texas case where they really did not have permission but got in and managed to occupy the property for long enough that it’s a civil eviction action.
(Regarding the “automatic” transfer of title to a long-time squatter by adverse possession.)
Property ownership is a fairly formal thing, being a matter of record maintained by (typically) county recorders; and important for tax purposes, municipalities trying to maintain property codes, and much more.
What’s probably not automatic (I would think) is the updating of official records, wherever they may be, to show that a squatter has become the owner. I can’t see how that would happen “automatically”, but instead, only if the squatter files some kind of paperwork at City Hall.
Right. When the ownership of a property changes, the selling (or giving) owner’s signature is on the deed. Typically this is a warranty, trustee’s, or quitclaim deed. If the owner is deceased, a Termination of Decedent’s Interest is filed along with a death certificate. If the owner is being represented by an attorney or someone with a Power of Attorney, they have forms to fill out, too, and many of these need to be notarized, which may require several forms of ID.
Of course there are more exotic situations like trusts, foreclosures, court orders, etc. But you can see that someone waltzing into City Hall claiming to be a new property owner has some hurdles to go through. Just signing a name change form won’t do it.
And some years ago, some cities (Los Angeles is one IIRC) were hit by fraudulent transactions and forged documents, and they instituted a procedure where the current property owner of record is notified by mail if any change is recorded to their title. They get a “courtesy notice” like (paraphrasing): “We have received the following documents and have modified our official records. If you were not aware of this action or did not permit it, please contact the County Recorder.” Hard to ignore that.
This is probably one of the biggest differences between out two countries.
First off, very few people, and only those who have been strictly vetted, own a gun of any kind. Most people would not want to either. Even the police, for the most part, are not routinely armed.
Second, if I find a stranger in my garden, I can use ‘reasonable’ force to remove him. The interpretation of ‘reasonable’ has varied a lot over the years, but never includes firearms, and a even cricket bat would be excessive in many circumstances. Of course most of us would simply call the police.
For trespass to be a crime, it has to meet several criteria, and a lot of the law concerns illegal raves and anti hunting demonstrations. While going onto someone’s land without permission, even if you walk past large signs saying “TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED”, is not necessarily breaking any law (think of climbing the fence to get your ball back), being on someones land can be illegal in several defined circumstances.