Posted on 03/07/2023 12:49:22 AM PST by dennisw
I’m working with a friend in a business situation where he may be in a good position to act on a “squatter’s rights” claim. In this case there may be no opposition because he is squatting on a common area in an HOA and — due to a combination of some unusual circumstances over the years — the common area is only accessible through his property anyway.
New Hampshire doesn't have squatters rights.
Adverse possession is found in Roman law as well.
Lost an inherited building lot because of squatters rights. Grandmother let the neighbors use half the lot for a driveway for 30 years. My grandmother passed and the lowlife neighbors claimed it was theirs.
Banks and his husband......see, now i don’t care, and those goats dodged a bullet.
( to be clear, I am for property owners rights! Not the squatters)
Well....it worked against the Indians. The saga continues...
“In AZ it’s called Adverse Possession, and the time period is ten years.”
While I realize that not everyone here has a background in real estate, I’m still surprised by how few people are familiar with Adverse Possession, as it’s one of the oldest laws in the books. And yes, it most often involves a driveway or a fence that is accidentally (or purposely) located incorrectly, and then stays in place, uncontested, for a certain amount of time. Usually not a big deal, but this article was a bit strange as to how the judge used it.
It’s kind of odd to see so many people weighing in here about the sanctity of property rights — and then applying this standard to cases where property owners didn’t care much about it at all.
It’s important to note that these cases don’t involve someone setting up a tent on the property for 48 hours and then claiming it as theirs. In every state where I’ve come across adverse possession situations, the period of occupancy is measured in years. In the case I referenced earlier on this thread, I believe the adverse possession period is 30 years.
“It’s important to note that these cases don’t involve someone setting up a tent on the property for 48 hours and then claiming it as theirs.”
Or coming home from a relatively short vacation to find people camped out in one’s house. Those cases, where the police won’t evict them show our society reverting to Third World, or really Animal Kingdom, levels.
Don’t worry. It’s not communism, it’s squatter’s rights.
The time period for adverse possession is set by statute and varies from state to state. Some places it is as short as 7 years.
The wife and I purchased some land and my sister and brother-in-law bought the other half of the land, which was initially a six-acre plot, now split into 2.5 acres and 3.5 acres plots, for my sister and us, respectively.
One of the first things I noticed was the property line and the fence line was off by a little less than a quarter of an acre on each of our plots.
We wrote the neighbor to ask them about the discrepancy. Luckily, the gentleman asked us to come around and see the reasoning for the discrepancy.
About 25 years ago his neighbors upstream dammed up the creek that ran through the area. About two years later the dam busted and washed out a 27’ deep ravine that ran along the property lines of my neighbor and what is now our properties. There are about eight 30’ long, 36” diameter culverts sticking up and out of the sandy ravine bottom, strewn about 100’ feet along what used to be the property line.
Our neighbor and the owners of what is now our property decided it was easier to move the fence up onto the non-washed-out ridge and they strung a new fence. They also installed a single wire strand that runs along the actual property line to mark the property boundaries. As he stated, unless we want to bring in thousands of yards of dirt to backfill that ravine, there is nothing that can be built on the shifting sandy bottom of that ravine.
We wrote this letter to get this situation rectified within the first year we got the property, to ensure we did not get caught in a “squatters” rights scenario. Luckily for us, our neighbor and the old owners were friends. And we were luck our neighbor was friendly, honest, and he was very nice about the whole situation.
Can he at least go after her to reimburse him the property taxes on the land for the last 20 years?
This is evil.
Having allodial title would have made ANYTHING his neighbor did immaterial. Fact is, he didn't allodially own his land, his municipality/county did, and therefore the municipality/county was within its 'rights' to take away this man's 'color of title', and transfer to his neighbor.
If he had allodial title, only he could do so... not a court or magistrate on his behalf.
It is so hard for me to believe that these laws are still the best way to do this in the 21st century.
He should have had it surveyed ...if it wasn't and posted....and sent a letter to the goat farmer if he was going to be out of town.
Adverse possession is well known and happens every day.
This is how the law works though generally you not only have to prove occupation but also upkeep, paying taxes etc on said land etc. don’t know this states exact laws but this is a legal Avenue to become the owner of land.
Went through the same thing with a buddy.
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