How Squatters STEAL Your Property!? 

Start the chain! Please assist Ironland

Please assist Ironland!

I'm going through this as well in real time right now. Our seller had a lease with the neighbor to allow her to run livestock on part of the property. It is a nightmare. But we are claiming the victory as it was NOT hostile.

Actually, a buried pipe may just result in a prescriptive easement, not necessarily a transfer of ownership - and you can still use your land as before, just can't stop the use of the pipe below ground. And as far as permission, as long as they haven't reached the statutory time period in your state, (varies - 5, 10, 15, 20 years), you can send a registered letter granting them permission to use your land for a certain time period, and that should break their adverse use claim. You should also see if your state allows tacking. That's where the statutory time period can be accrued between owners. In some states, the time period starts new with a new owner. How do you know about the encroachments? Did you have your land surveyed?

adverse possession and squatters rights are strange and seems like a little common sense gone array ,i wish you well on keeping your land from greedy people and malicious lawyers to turn into a title by conquest

@@jpmacoo It was a couple plastic flexispout gutter pipes run a couple hundred feet from their house across the property line, each buried about 6 inches. One was totally buried and not visible at termination point at all and the other was sticking out into a small ditch on my wooded part of my land covered by vegetation. I found out about them because the lady next door had started acting suspiciously and obviously studying our frontage from the road in a way that no one does, focused on all the property lines not just hers. I had also seen her sneaking into my wooded area on a couple occasions then saw her at 7AM with a contractor escorting him to the property line and he left in a hurry with a large plastic bag of something (most likely dug up vegetation that overed up the pipe). When I confronted them about it they denied all knowledge and when I asked them to move it they kind of said some weasel worded statements that were indicative of deception or avoidance. So I moved it to their yard with their permission and gave them a proper daylight for the pipe. Then I found another one by poking around where I had seen them on a couple occasions looking oddly at the ground on my property and oved that one to their yard too. So now both pipes are gone but I suspect they have more but cannot find them. I have fenced the property line and posted it with signage and have done some exploratory trenching and digging but so far no luck in finding anymore. I did offer them permission in writing but the guy got mad at me and seemed frustrated because i offered it after I asked him nicely to relocate that first pipe, so he was confused by my offer of permission and thought I was doing something sneaky to him by giving him permission so I dropped it as a letter from a lawyer would cost around $500 and if he doesn't want to acknowledge it in writing, the lawyers all say it's pretty much worthless as evidence in court without them acknowledging it. I did not buy a survey when we bought the home because there had been a publicly filed survey one year before and I walked the property lines and there were no visible encroachments of any kind. I used the same surveyor to place my fence that had done the survey a year before we bought, before the pipe was found and he never saw it. I surveyed my fence after both pipes were moved and they saw no additional encroachments. Lawyers have said I look to be in the clear but these neighbors act pretty sneaky and entitled. Yes we have tacking and the guy who sold them the house was the neighbor when we moved in, He had the drain pipes installed shortly after the house was built based on old google photos. This is a terrible law by the way.

@@donmulder8061 When you say you walked the lines, how did you do that? Were the surveyor's stakes still there, or did you use the plat/plan/map as a reference to guide you to where the lines are? As a surveyor it often baffles me when someone calls to have their boundary lines marked out because of a conflict with the neighbor, I give them a price, and then they discover that they already have a "survey", which is a plan from 1950 or so, and they're all set. That's fine, but how are they transferring the lot from the paper to the ground?

Thanks for watching!

The owner of the property.

@@TheRealEstateLawyer what I meant if the named owner on the deed /assessors office stopped paying taxes and the person fulfilling the requirements for adverse possession and now taking over tax payments .... or there could be pieces of land that evolved through land survey blunders that there was no tax collected on to begin with then the claimant will attempt to pay taxes on the property. (the joke "nobody really owns anything just stop paying your taxes and see what happens"may apply here 😂)

@@sixsixtysixanhour I'm not sure if that matters. If your shed has been over the deeded boundary line for 20+ years, you may've acquired the land that your shed sits on. There is no difference in the taxes probably for that 100+/- SF that you're on.

@@jpmacoo I'm thinking more of a piece of land that hasn't been obviously occupied by anyone ,most likely the land emerged from a land survey blunder. If one wanted to acquire it through adverse possession from an unidentifiable owner..(meaning nobody owns it) maybe offering to pay the taxes on it would help the case.

@@sixsixtysixanhour Ok, I hear what you're saying. I had a situation where I surveyed a parcel for a client, and there were about 6 acres within the boundary stonewalls. The client's deed description defined only half of it, but they and the prior owners had been using all of it. I researched the hell out of it and the adjoining properties, but couldn’t figure out anything about who owned the other parcel. I prepared a plan showing their deeded boundaries along with the parcel that they were claiming. They took it to court, and they gained title to it. But I have no idea whether they were paying taxes on it, whether the town had it listed as a 3 or 6 acre lot, or whether it would’ve made much of a difference in their bill.

Is it? Depending where you live, you can either search your name online, or go to the local recorder of deeds and check for any transactions on your property. You can see if it's been done to you. But I don't think it's as common as you think it is.

There's not too much more I can explain. I walked you through step by step of how the adverse possession law works. Anything more is specific situations which would be legal advice and need a client agreement signed.

Denying permission reinforces that the use is Adverse. Whereas if you give permission, it makes it Permissive use, which then refutes one of the elements needed

@@jpmacoo and shouldn't it be on the one trying to STEAL THE LAND from the other to have to prove they weren't given permission? We have proof in terms of a lease agreement between our seller snd our neighbor. She was given permission. However she claims the lease expired in 2014, because that is when they stopped paying the $50/month rent, however the lease reads month to month and termination must be in writing. Shouldn't the neighbor then have to prove the lease was terminated and permission was not granted? The law reads permission could be verbal and as I said we have a written lease. We further have a text exchange where my husband asked the neighbor if we could install fences so we could still access OUR LAND and the neighbors didn't throw a stink or stake their claim to the land, instead they simply said sure we can do that. Our seller said the reason he didn't go after then for the measly 50/month rent was because their dad was terminally ill and they didn't care about or need the money. Even still the last payment on file was made in August 2014 so if she wants to insist she didn't have permission, she isn't quite at the 10 year mark my state requires. Close but no cigar. We started the process of removing then April 2024 and the eviction has been filed to "stop the clock" last week. Why must people be so evil? 🤷‍♀️🙏

It's very nuanced. In reality, the only time a land owner will grant permission to someone to enter their property is when they genuinely want them on their land for a specified purpose. Many cases of granting sincere permission are challenged by adverse possessors because the courts look the other way at bad faith meaning adverse possessors are allowed to lie to perfect their claim but land owners are not. If you grant permission to someone who you fear is perfecting an adverse possession claim, do it only for a short period of time, in writing and give them a suspense to respond in writing via certified mail through your lawyer. That's the only fool proof way to avoid adverse possession by granting permission and even then, some adverse possessors will still dredge up evidence that will call into question the sincerity of the permission. It's insane. The law favors the land thief.

More examples usually is a "it depends" answer. Every situation is unique so it's tough to explain more than the details of the law.

Would we be able to squat the iron?