Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:21 pm Post subject: Re: Adverse possession
Cashmere wrote:
Like I said, it's real simple, and only people with shady morals - the kind that decent people are well advised to avoid - see gray in this.
.....
It is you stealing from him, and frankly I have no regard for anybody who is so devoid of basic morals that he finds this a tough question.
.......
What sort of horshithead professor-type came up with the argument that the mere fact that a man is "not producing his land" somehow brings into question that he owns the land?
Part of my land, while I'm living and still legally capable, will NOT be developed - I like it just the way it is - swampy, buggy, etcetera.
Am I not the proper owner if some yahoo starts growing potatoes on it?
This kind on nonsense is left over from a day when it was a necessity.
It no longer is, and, like Georgian sodomy laws, the time for burying this nonsense is long gone.
By the way, it's also the unproductive freeloaders of the world who think AP is a good concept.
Fascinating to see the evolution of "morals" in this way. Native Americans are still trying to return use or get payment for lands taken in incredibly agressive AP actions of the past, and the courts are still not so good at hearing what are truly open and shut cases on the evidence if so many pre-eminent toes wouldn't be stepped on by honoring the covenants and contracts so convenientluy abrogated and ignored by today's society, never mind the vastly larger amounts of land where agreements were simply not bothered with.
The "sort of horshithead professor-types" who came up with AP argument were our European forebears who made it up to steal an entire continent and continue to use it to this day to avoid payment for the occupation and use of lands they smugly view as their own, despite clear and active agreemants to the contrary..
And no, you are NOT the "proper owner of your land" if someone with more power decides to take it away. We apply this same value to many of the actions we've applied to the rest of the world as well. Your moralistic condemnation of the practice is hypocracy at its finest.
Last edited by Fiddlerdave on Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:23 pm Post subject: Re: Adverse possession
If I'm not mistaken, this is more or less the legal doctrine that the Euros used to steal the land from the Indians in the first place. Because the Indians weren't "putting it to use" and didn't force the Euros out, the Euros figured they were entitled to the land. _________________ "So while you sit and whistle Dixie with your money and your power.
I can hear the flowers a-growin in the rubble of the towers.
I hear leaders quit their lying
I hear babies quit their crying.
I hear soldiers quit their dying, one and all." - OCMS
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:07 am Post subject: Re: Adverse possession
I've been on the short end of this a couple times. Once was an unabashed attempted grab by a wealthy absentee owner. This sort of thing is hard for a poor person to fight in court, where money carries the day all too often. In my case, the aggressor had the misfortune to have their only sewer access across my property, without benefit of an easement. When I explained that my plans for a goldfish pond would interrupt their sewer service, they elected to negotiate in good faith, and back off.
The other was a typical farm boudary dispute, that I got resolved by countering that there was no fence defining the boundary (the basis of such a claim in Indiana), so it was up to the other guy to hire a survey to prove his claim. He just wanted something for nothing, so he backed off, too.
Today, these disputes are mostly resolved with courts and money, if the claim is worth it. In the future, I suspect it will be more like pioneer days. _________________ Local fix-it guy..
Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 2343 Location: perpetual state of exhaustion
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:32 am Post subject: Re: Adverse possession
In Canada its much the same. In BC for instance until 1979 you could walk onto a piece of crown land and use it. If no one kicked you off or the government didn't object after 10 years it was yours.
Recently, my landlord tore down a fence (that had been put up by his neighbour) he rebuilt a new one further onto their property and figured he could bully a 92 year old widdow into just letting him take over a bit of her land.
Bullys are like that, luckily though her granddaughter tore down the fence he built illegally on her land and it pissed him off hugely, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do cause if was on their land and they could do anything they wanted to it regardless of who paid for or built the thing.
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 9:11 am Post subject: Re: Adverse possession
I believe that in the state where I live AP takes 20 years of UNINTERRUPTED use. Therefore, if I put up a fence and keep you off for one day your 20 year clock starts over.
A new fence and a shotgun would do that. By the time you got a lawyer and or police and tried to get on the porperty the day would be over.
On the other hand, if I found out that you were going to be away for a couple of days I'd put the fence up when you were gone, by the time you came back, you'd be out of luck.
Laws like this are why even the largest landowners walk thier property (or drive it) every few years no matter how remote it might be.
Joined: May 18, 2006 Posts: 4388 Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 9:53 am Post subject: Re: Adverse possession
TreeFarmer wrote:
I believe that in the state where I live AP takes 20 years of UNINTERRUPTED use. Therefore, if I put up a fence and keep you off for one day your 20 year clock starts over.
A new fence and a shotgun would do that. By the time you got a lawyer and or police and tried to get on the porperty the day would be over.
On the other hand, if I found out that you were going to be away for a couple of days I'd put the fence up when you were gone, by the time you came back, you'd be out of luck.
Laws like this are why even the largest landowners walk thier property (or drive it) every few years no matter how remote it might be.
Got to keep the riff-raff away.
TF
What's Fark here is the USA is access to foot trails. Trails may be decades old, but a new land owner can fence people out. I think access laws are very different in the UK.
Quote:
Called Betretungsrecht in Germany, or Allemannsretten in Norway, the traditional rightof public access across private and common land is currently undergoing modernstatutory shifts across Canada and the world. In the UK, the Countryside and Rights of
Way Bill (CROW) underwent a final stage of implementation in October of 2005,granting a 200,000 km network of rights of way for the purpose of quiet recreation.Legislation has not come easily – there have been major efforts over the last 100 years to
increase opportunities for public access to the English countryside. “This new right ofaccess is a major landmark in working towards this. By giving every member of the
public more opportunities to get out and enjoy the countryside we can in time build ahealthier, more environmentally aware society.” (Pam Warhurst, Countryside Agency Deputy Chair and Chair of the National Countryside Access Forum)
There are 50 jurisdictions in the U.S., each with its own laws on adverse possession, so I wouldn't be sure that following the paragraph above will get you what you want. I'll add that it's entirely immoral, in my code, to do this, and you'd have to be a real cretin to steal somebody's property this way and then use an immoral law to protect yourself (at least legally - what the true owner will do outside the bounds of the law is what I'd be more worried about).
A flaw in adverse possession is that your recourse against someone attempt to appropriate your land consists of two parts: what you can do yourself to evict the land-grabber, and what the law will do on your behalf to this end. It is possible that the land-grabber might be stronger than you. And it is also possible that the land-grabber might have the "fix" in with the local judge. The only remedy in this case, as far as I can see, is ambush, poison, or some other form of assassination, followed by a speedy exit from the county.
Cashmere wrote:
AP laws are a relic of when there were 360 million fewer people living here and vast tracks of land were legally owned by absentee gentry. The point was to protect settler types who moved into an area, were unable to determine if title was held, put up a house and otherwise improved the land, and then had to deal with the original owner arriving 10 years later, demanding that they leave. And that made some sense.
I think one of the more egregious offenders in that crime was none other than our own George Washington. He'd bought some land in Ohio, waited for people to move in and, thinking that they'd arrived in an unclaimed part of the frontier, improve it with homes and barns, fences, etc. Then George showed up, took all the homesteaders to court, and stripped them bare.
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