Posted on 11/12/2007 6:44:32 PM PST by beaversmom
Edited on 11/15/2007 7:42:04 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
“... if my Neighbour hath a Mind to my Cow,
he hires a Lawyer to prove that he ought to
have my Cow from me.”
( IV:5;13)
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift
Boulder Co.? Who gives a damn. Let those lefties eat each other and die in their socialism.
It’s communicable—it will spread.
It can only spread up until the Revolution.
This is interesting. Our community assn was involved in a property dispute. The settlement was based on who paid the taxes, not on who used the land. The users of the land could get an easement, but not ownership.
Is it possible that the Kirlins still own the land, but can’t use it because they had to give the neighbors an easement for such a large portion?
From what the article, video, and radio program said tonight the judge gave them 1/3 of the property.
I find this hard to believe. California has "adverse possession" laws too, but when it says "open, notorious and continuous" it means exactly that. The possession must be validated by building a fence or other improvement, not just casual "invisible" use.
I suspect abuse of power and influence in this case.
Ummmm, people this is a VERY (very) old principle law, coming down from English law called “adverse possession,” not some new commie thing coming out of Boulder.
I know of a property in rural Virginia where the same thing happened. A farmer fenced in few acres of his neighbors land and used it for his cattle without asking. The neighbor was an absentee owner, like this one. He used it for I think 10 years or so...without interruption. He goes to court and files for title of ownership and wins....
The owner could have defeated the claim had he torn down the fences every year or two, or shown some evidence of ownership, which he didn’t....but VERY OLD principles of property ownership are: Use it or lose it!
Shown me a copy of the deed, if he has a legal description of the property on the deed he owns it. Otherwise he does not.
This has always been common law - for centuries. I learned about it in a first semester business law.
You've got to take care of your own property lines because no government is going to do it for you.
In most states; and caveat: I can only speak to California law, it’s also a requirement to pay the property taxes. If the (real) owners paid the property taxes, the interlopers have no case.
I saw one when I lived down in Tampa that said:
It’s about claim to title, not ownership. A mining claim, a deed-in-trust (mortgage), a long-term lease beyond the statutory period, or a trust should be enough to establish claim to title.
The problem may lie in whether or not the party losing the adverse possession case had a recorded title and a recorded survey, or may have known the “adverse possessor” was coming and going, but assumed it was no big deal.
In Texas if you “knowingly allow” another party to “use” a part of your property without any agreement in writing, eventually you could lose all or part to adverse possession.
I run into sellers now and then that never bothered to survey and record the deed they got when buying much less have any title work done when buying. Ripe for a boatload of other problems. Makes it real hard to transfer in a later legal sale closing.
Audio of Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman talking about the Kirlin property case in Boulder—interview with Mr. Kirlin about how the former judge and his wife did the takeover:
Hmmmmm.....I’ll see their lawsuit and raise it one Sig P226.
And you degree in real estate came from what university?
Correct, except that nowadays it is difficult to prove you are paying taxes on the property in a subdivision where the taxes were assessed on the deed description and not on the fenced lot. Our neighbors got burned badly on this when they bought a house in a new subdivision backing to an older subdivision. About twelve years on, the backyard neighbors suddenly claimed the deeds showed the fence was in the wrong place by about eight feet and the proper deed boundary traversed our neighbor’s pool. Because of the way the assessor kept records, the neighbors could not prove they paid the taxes on the extra property. Result: they were in the middle of selling the property and ended up paying some $23K for 385 square feet, not counting court costs, to keep their fence where it was and sell. There was open adverse use, a fence with no access by the “record owner”, and passage of several years but it did no good. They lost and the “record owners” basically blackmailed them to pay heavily so they could consummate their sale. I still am not speaking to those backyard neighbors.
Storal of the mory: Don’t trust developers to place the fences correctly. Have your deed and fence lines verified. Our city grew so fast that there are a lot of boundary disputes going on and the laws don’t really reflect the reality of subdivision markets so innocent buyers who bought a new piece of property already fenced by the developer are now getting burned, some big time.
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