Posted on 03/07/2023 12:49:22 AM PST by dennisw
Burton Banks, an Atlanta-based financial advisor, inherited from his father several plots of land in Ocean View, Delaware Banks wanted to sell part of the property in 2021, but learnt that his neighbor Melissa Schrock had been grazing her goats on the land
A judge last month ruled that Schrock had been on the property for more than 20 years and so had squatter's rights: Banks was forced to hand over the land
A judge in Delaware has ordered a businessman hand over a $125,000 parcel of land to his neighbor after she kept her goats on the land for over 20 years and claimed squatter's rights.
Burton Banks, an Atlanta-based financial advisor, inherited the uninhabited plot of land in Ocean View, Delaware, from his father Ralph.
In 2021 Banks and his husband David Barrett decided they wanted to sell the plot of land, which sits empty and undeveloped.
But he discovered that around two thirds of an acre was being used by his neighbor Melissa Schrock, who had erected a pen for her goats on the land.
'It's just always been my backyard since I was a little kid,' Schrock said.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The owner must know, the owner must have been against you doing it and you must have been doing it for a set length of time.
Know a case where a son tried to claim the family home because he was living there with his mother prior to her death. The owner (his mother) knew he was there but was fine with him being there so he failed the hostile requirement.
Or join the fun like what happened to me. My first house was condemned by the city government for a park bathroom. Just like that, I was kicked out with a check that wouldn’t even buy a paper box behind the local mall. No court proceedings, no fair market value, and the good ol power of,government and the sheriff’s department to arrest me (would have probably had no problem eliminating me with anSWAT raid “gone bad”) and throw me out.
More reasons for my everlasting deep contempt for government.
Nice, but irrelevant.
“In a completely worldly sense, property ownership has important legal implications. Ignore them at your peril“
Yeah well the law is the law but what this woman did is, for me, un-Christian. She got cut a break all those years and when the party was over she then legally steals the land. She took something that didn’t and doesn’t Rightfully belong to her.
excellent synopsis...
I would like to read the citations that support that opinion.
Sounds like petty theft to me. Did you at least offer to pay for the land? If so, then at least you sort of tried to do the right thing. If not, your actions are just bad as a pedophiles in my book.
Nope. His neighbor occupied the property.
.
“Sounds like petty theft to me.”
It’s my land, his plat and survey were wrong.
His lot is a corner lot, originally platted with a 90 degree corner.
The corner was changed to a radius many years ago, but whoever did it failed to subtract the radius (25’) from the frontage distance.
That mistake effectively moved the other end of his frontage past my driveway.
This could all have been proved in court but the AP issue made it moot.
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