Posted on 08/21/2010 11:55:30 AM PDT by businessprofessor
(see my #20)
Owners with land they don't visit often are particularly susceptible to the scam.
We had a case of adverse posession in this neighborhood. 2 large, prominent families who owned quite a bit of land. We’ll call them Family J and Family F. Both families had many doctors and lawyers and judges within them. Family F mostly used their land holdings as a summer vacation spot. Only a bachelor member of Family F actually lived full time there, down in a hollow.
Family J occupied their land more regularly and kept horse trails cut through it for recreational riding. Family J was also prominent in real estate circles. Family J consistently rode their horses across the Family F’s land and filed for adverse possession of the parcel after 7 years — thereby linking two of their large land holdings and engendering the life-long animosity of Family F who lost their land, even though they had the same number of attorneys and judges in their family.
The whole affair engendered a lot of gossip and had people around here closing off trails that crosss their properties.
It seems that these squatters are taking a page from the “illegal immigrant” playbook. I mean, it’s about the “little people” right? Who are we to be so bigoted that we should say they don’t have a right to that house and the lifestyle it affords? Can’t we all just get along. Live and let live??
/sarc
I’m a lawyer. Yeah, I think I recall what you’re talking about. A Colorado couple stole their neighbor’s property by adverse possession. If someone treats a property as their own, and the true owner doesn’t do anything about it until the statute of limitations has passed, then the law says that the property belongs to the person who is treating as their own. The trial court upheld it in this Colorado couples’ case. I don’t remember if the appeals court did or not. Basically, they set out with the idea that they were going to steal it. If I were the judge, I would not uphold it in that instance. In my opinion, the law should be that you need to actually think the property is your property, but I don’t think that is the law in most states, including Colorado.
These squatters though are way off in left field. The statute of limitations is many years in most states. In Costa Rica, though, it’s only a matter of weeks. That’s what makes me think these squatters are illegals. They apparently are familiar with laws that have very short statutes of limitation, as in Costa Rica, perhaps other Latin American nations.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=60533
I can’t find anything that shows how it turned out. I suspect that they did not lose their land, or it would have been reported.
Thanks, B (and others who took the time to pass on info on “adverse possession”)
I learn more in an afternoon on this site than I did in a whole semester of some of my college courses.
(of course it helps that I’m awake while perusing FR - can’t say the same for “Intro to Sociology”).
“Seattle deserves this.”
The neighbors deserve to live near this property with squatters?
The bank-owner deserves to have problems, costs, delays?
The listing agent deserves extra difficulties, doing his job?
The PD deserves this to?
Do only certain people “deserve” good things, and certain people “deserve” bad things?
A $3 million property usually means conservative voters and neighbors. They deserve this?
Remember the nightly news reports of the millions of homeless when Reagan was president?
Obama has no homeless problem./s
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