Its called adverse possession. No, I didn’t like it either when it was taught to me in my Property I and Property II classes in law school. There is a good reason for it though. Courts have been geared toward achieving maximum economic efficiency. Having land sit idle and unused is not economically beneficial. So if someone uses the land for long enough and the actual owner does not contest their usage of it or assert their rights to it, then eventually, they lose that land......they obviously weren’t using it.
But to meet the conditions for adverse possession it has to be “adverse and hostile” meaning the person using the land has to claim its theirs, not that its somebody else’s and they’re just using it. It has to be “open and notorious” meaning they can’t do it on the sly. In several states, the squatter has to pay the property taxes on that land to satisfy the open and notorious requirement. etc etc.
In other words, you really have to neglect your property in order to lose it to adverse possession by another. As is often the case in the law, if you sit on your rights and don’t enforce them, you lose them.
excellent synopsis...