Adverse possession

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In common law, adverse possession is the process by which title to another's real property is acquired without compensation, by, as the name suggests, holding the property in a manner that conflicts with the true owner's rights for a specified period of time. Circumstances of the adverse possession determine the type of title acquired by the disseisor, which may be fee simple title, mineral rights, or another interest in real property.

The law of adverse possession is partly statutory and partly common law. The required period of uninterrupted possession arises out of a statutory limitation period or statute of limitations. Other elements of adverse possession are judicial constructs.

Contents

[edit] Purpose and Moral Basis

The primary purpose of adverse possession in the law is to cure defects in real estate titles by putting a statute of limitations on litigation.

Without the doctrine of adverse possession one could never know if one's title to real estate was secure, because long lost heirs of any former owner or lien holder of centuries past could come forward with a legal claim on the property. Adverse possession places a statute of limitations on this kind of action, giving vigilant property owners security in their possessions.

Adverse possession is based on the doctrine of laches, which states that "neglect to assert a right or claim that, together with lapse of time and other circumstances, prejudices an adverse party. Neglecting to do what should or could, have been done to assert a claim or right for an unreasonable and unjustified time causing disadvantage to another[1]."

Plainly stated, this means the law does not reward a person who neglects to enforce his property rights by allowing him to claim the fruit of another person's labor at a later time. Failure of a landowner to exercise and defend his property rights for a certain length of time may result in the permanent loss of the landowner's interest in the property.

An example of this would be if a land owner saw that his neighbor had begun building a house on his land, due to ignorance of the location of the property line. If the land owner waits until the house is completed and then sues his neighbor over the location of the line, he has wrongly gained a house on his land at his neighbor's expense. The same principle would apply to any kind of work that improves the land from a wild state.

[edit] Requirements for adverse possession

The adverse party is called the "disseisor", meaning one one who dispossesses the true owner of the property.

Adverse possession requires five conditions to be met in order to perfect the title of the disseisor[2]:

1. Actual possession: the disseisor must physically use the land as a property owner would, in accordance with the type of property, location, and uses. Merely walking on land, or hunting, does not establish actual possession[3] His actions must change the state of the land. Examples include, clearing, mowing, planting, harvesting fruit of the land, cutting timber, mining, fencing, pulling stumps, running livestock and constructing buildings and other improvements.

Paying taxes does not establish actual possession, but may be admitted by some courts as evidence of claim of right. For example, if the true owner regularly pays taxes on the land, even while a disseisor has taken actual possession of the land by his regular use and improvement of it, the true owner's payment of taxes does not affect the disseisor's actual possession.

However, if the disseisor were to pay taxes over the same period that he was using and improving the land, the court might find that his payment of taxes was evidence that he believed he had a "claim of right" to the land.

2. Open and notorious: the disseisor's use of the property is so visible and apparent that it gives notice to the legal owner that someone may assert claim. Must be of such character that would give notice to a reasonable person. If legal owner has knowledge, this element is met, although can be also met by fencing, posted signs, crops, buildings, or animals that a diligent owner could be expected to know about.

3. Exclusive: the disseisor holds the land to the exclusion of the true owner. Renters, hunters, and anyone else who entered the land with the permission of the true owner, fail to have exclusive possession.

4. Hostile or adverse: Objective view: used without true owner’s permission and inconsistent with true owner’s rights. Bad faith or intentional trespass view: the adverse possessor’s subjective intent and state of mind. Mistaken possession in some jurisdictions does not constitute a hostility. (An element that is often irrelevant). Good faith view: a few courts have required that the party actually mistakenly believe that it is his/her land. All views require that the disseisor claim the land as his own against all possible claims.

5. Continuous: the disseisor must, for statute of limitations purposes, show that property was held continuously for the entire limitations period. Must use as a true owner would for that time. When is the use significant enough to start the running of statute of limitations. This element is focused on adverse possessor’s time on the land, not how long true owner has been dispossessed of it.

Occasional activity on the land with long gaps in activity fail the test of continuous possession. Courts have ruled that merely cutting timber at intervals, when not accompanied by other actions that demonstrate actual and continuous possession, fails to demonstrate continuous possession.

If the true owner ejects the disseisor from the land, verbally or through legal action, and after some time the disseisor returns and dispossesses him again, then the statute of limitation starts over from the time of the disseisor's return. He cannot count the time prior to his ejection by the true property owner.

In addition, some courts require (by common law or statute):

6. Claim of title or claim of right.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the mere intent to take the land as one's own constitutes "claim of right". Other cases have determined that a claim of right exists if the person believes he has rightful claim to the property, even if that belief is mistaken.

A negative example would be a timber thief who sneaks onto a property, cuts timber not visible from the road and hauls the logs away at night. His actions, though they demonstrate actual possession, also demonstrate knowledge of guilt, as opposed to claim of right.

7. Good faith or bad faith

8. Improvement, cultivation, or enclosure

9. Payment of property taxes

10. Not under force of arms.

Dispossession by armed invasion does not establish a claim of adverse possession against the true owner.

[edit] Summary

In simple terms, the disseisor must occupy the property exclusively (keeping out others) and openly, and use it as if it were his own.

Some jurisdictions permit accidental adverse possession as might occur with a surveying error. Generally, the openly hostile possession must be continuous (although not necessarily constant) without challenge or permission from the lawful owner, for a fixed statutory period in order to acquire title.

Where the property is of a type ordinarily only occupied during certain times (such as a summer cottage), the disseisor may only need to have exclusive, open, and hostile possession during those successive useful periods, making the same use of the property as an owner would for the required number of years.

[edit] Effect of adverse possession

An disseisor will be committing a civil trespass on the property that they have taken and the owner of the property could cause them to be evicted by an action in trespass ("ejectment") or by bringing an action for possession. All common law jurisdictions require that the action of trespass is brought within a specified time, after which the true owner is assumed to have acquiesced. The effect of a failure by the land owner to evict the adverse possessor depends on the jurisdiction.

In some jurisdictions (such as England and Wales), the title of the landowner will be automatically extinguished once the relevant limitation period has passed. This process now only applies to unregistered land.

In other jurisdictions, the disseisor acquires merely an equitable title: the land owner being a trustee of the property for them.

Adverse possession only extends to the property actually possessed. If the original owner had a title to a greater area (or volume) of property, the disseisor does not obtain all of it. (The exception to this is when the disseisor enters the land under a color of title to the entire parcel, his continuous and actual possession of a small part of that parcel will perfect his title to the entire parcel defined in his color of title.)

In some jurisdictions, a person who has successfully obtained title to property by adverse possession may (optionally) bring an action in land court to "quiet title" of record in their names on some or all of the former owner's property. Such action will make it simpler to convey the interest to others in a definitive manner, and also serves as notice that there is a new "owner" of record, which may be a pre-requisite to certain benefits (including equity loans, or judicial standing as an abutter). However, even if such action is not taken, the title is legally theirs, with most of the benefits and duties, including paying property taxes to avoid losing title to the tax collector. The effects of having a stranger to the title paying taxes on property may vary from one jurisdiction to another. (Many jurisdictions have accepted tax payment for the same parcel from two different parties without raising an objection or notifying either party that the other had also paid.)

Adverse possession does not typically work against property owned by a government agency. However, there will be a more complicated analysis if private property were taken by eminent domain, control given to a private corporation (such as a railroad), then abandoned.

Where land is registered under a Torrens title registration system or similar, special rules apply. It may be that the land cannot be affected by adverse possession (as was the case in England and Wales from 1875 to 1926), or that special rules apply.

Adverse possession may also apply to territorial rights. In the United States, Georgia lost an island in the Savannah River to South Carolina, when that state used fill from dredging to attach the island to its own shore. Since Georgia knew of this yet did nothing about it, the U.S. Supreme Court (which has original jurisdiction in such matters) granted this land to South Carolina, even though the Treaty of Beaufort (1787) explicitly specified that the river's islands belonged to Georgia.

[edit] England and Wales

In England and Wales, adverse possession has been governed by section 15 of the Limitation Act 1980, since 1 May 1981.[4] The limitation period for the adverse possession of land is 12 years under Section 15(1).[5] After 12 years, the title of the original owner is extinguished. The adverse possessor then becomes the person with the best title to the land and is entitled to maintain an action in trespass against anyone who might seek to dispossess him.

The position of a registered landowner has been greatly improved since the coming into force of the Land Registration Act 2002. Where land is registered, the adverse possessor may apply to be registered as owner after 10 years of adverse possession and the Land Registry must give notice to the true owner of this application. This gives the land owner a statutory period of time [65 business days] to object to the adverse possession, after which the true owner usually will have a further two years in which to evict the adverse possessor. This effectively prevents the removal of a land owner's right to property without their knowledge.

Where a tenant adversely possess land, there is a presumption that they are doing so in a way that will benefit their landlord at the end of their term. If the land does not belong to their landlord, the land will become part of both the tenancy and the reversion. If the land does belong to their landlord it would seem that it will be gained by the tenant but only for the period of their term. [6]

[edit] Squatter's rights

Adverse possession is sometimes called "squatters' rights". If the squatter abandons the property for a period, or if the rightful owner effectively removes the squatter's access even temporarily during the statutory period, or even gives his permission, the "clock" usually stops. For example, if the required period in a given jurisdiction is twenty years and the squatter is removed after only fifteen years, the squatter loses the benefit of that 15 year possession (i.e., the "clock" is re-set to "zero"). If that squatter later retakes possession of the property, that squatter must, in order to acquire title, remain on the property for a full twenty years after the date on which the squatter retook possession. In this example, the squatter would have to have held the property for a total of 35 years (the 15 original years plus the 20 later years) to acquire title.

However, one squatter may pass along continuous possession to another squatter, known as "tacking", until the adverse possession period is complete. A lawful owner may also restart the "clock" at "zero" by giving temporary permission for the occupation of the property, thus defeating the necessary "continuous and hostile" element. Evidence that a "squatter" paid rent to the owner would defeat adverse possession for that period.

[edit] Comparison to homesteading

Adverse possession is in some ways similar to homesteading. Like the disseisor, the homesteader may gain title to property by using the land and fulfilling certain other conditions. In homesteading, however, the possession of the property is not hostile; the land is either considered to have no legal owner or it is owned by the government. The government allows the homesteader to use the land with the expectation that the homesteader who fulfills the requirements necessary for the homestead will gain title to the property.

The homestead principle and squatter's rights embody the most basic concept of property and ownership, which can be summed up by the adage "possession is nine-tenths of the law"; in other words, "the person who uses the property owns it"; likewise, "use it or lose it". The homestead principle and squatter's rights pre-date formal property laws and to a large degree modern property law is a formalization and expansion of these simple ideas.

The homestead principle is the idea that if no one is using or possessing property, the first person to claim it and use it consistently over a period of time owns the property. Squatter's rights embodies the idea that if one property owner neglects property and fails to use it, and a second person starts to tend and use the property, then after a certain period of time the first person's claim to the property is lost and ownership transfers to the second person, who is actually using the property.

The legal principle of homesteading, then, is a formalization of the fundamental homestead principle in the same way that the right of adverse possession is a formalization of the fundamental and pre-existing principle of squatter's rights.

The essential ideas behind the homestead principle and squatter's rights hold generally for any type of item or property of which ownership can be asserted by simple use or possession. In modern law, homesteading and the right of adverse possession refer exclusively to real property. In the realm of personal property, the same impulse is summarized by the adage "finders keepers" and formalized by laws and conventions about abandoned property.

[edit] Copyrights

Some legal scholars have proposed to extend the concept of adverse possession to intellectual property law, in particular to reconcile intellectual property and antitrust law[7] or to unify copyright law and property law.[8]

[edit] Adverse easements

Adverse possession grants only those rights in the disseized property which are 'taken' by the disseisor. For example, an disseisor might choose to take an easement, rather than the entire fee title to the property. In this manner, it is possible to disseize an easement, under the legal doctrine of prescription. This must also be done openly but need not be exclusive, and must outlast the same required statutory eviction period. It is common practice in cities such as New York, where builders often leave sidewalk space or plazas in front of their buildings to meet zoning requirements, to close public areas they own periodically in order to prevent the creation of a permanent easement and compromise their exclusive property rights.

Furthermore, if a property owner interferes with an easement upon his property in a manner that satisfies the requirements for adverse prescription (e.g., locking the gates to a commonly used area, and nobody does anything about it), they will successfully extinguish the easement. This is another reason to quiet title after a successful adverse possession or adverse prescription; it clarifies the record of who should take action to preserve the adverse title or easement while evidence is still fresh.

For example, given a deeded easement to use someone else's driveway to reach a garage, if a fence or permanently locked gate prevents the use, and nothing is done to remove and circumvent the obstacle, and the statutory period expires, then the easement ceases to have any legal force, even though the deed held by the fee simple owner stated that the owner's interest was subject to the easement.

Strictly, prescription works in a different way to adverse possession. Adverse possession is concerned with the extinction of the title of the original owner by a rule of limitation of actions. Prescription, on the other hand, is concerned with acquiring a right that did not previously exist.

[edit] Non-common law jurisdictions

Some non-common law jurisdictions have laws similar to adverse possession. For example, Louisiana has a legal doctrine called acquisitive prescription.

In Roman law, usucapio laws allowed someone who was in possession of a good without title to become the lawful proprietor if the original owner didn't show up after some time (one or two years), unless the good was obtained illegally (by theft or force).

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.lectlaw.com/def/l056.htm
  2. ^ Although some jurisdictions further require the possession to be made under a claim of title or a claim of right and/or other requirements listed below.
  3. ^ In Cone v. West Virginia Pulp & Paper, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court found that Mr. Cone failed to establish actual possession by occasionally visiting the land and hunting on it, because his actions did not change the land from a wild and natural state.
  4. ^ Section 41(2) Limitation Act 1980
  5. ^ Section 15(1) Limitation Act 1980
  6. ^ Smirk v Lyndale Developments Ltd [1974] 3 WLR 91
  7. ^ Constance E. Bagley and Gavin Clarkson, "Adverse Possession for Intellectual Property: Adapting an Ancient Concept to Resolve Conflicts between Antitrust and Intellectual Property Laws in the Information Age" Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 16:2 (Spring 2003) full text
  8. ^ Michael James Arrett, "Adverse Possession of Copyright: A Proposal to Complete Copyright's Unification with Property Law", Journal of Corporation Law 31:1 (October 2005) abstract; full text (pay)