ids andy "he said, she said' in court. It should also be renewed in writin g periodically.
Google is your friend. I did a bit of it for Washington:
Period of 10 years adverse possession is required EXCEPT if you somehow man age to pay the taxes on it for 7 years it is enough.
"knew or should have known": couldn't find any phrase like itin the Washin gton law but I also could not find the "legal definition" of AP either.
However a google for: adverse postion "know or should have known" brings up pages of cites where it appears in legal cases of AP.
In the case of the OP where the fence is in the wrong place. Anyone buying the place after the fence was erected would be in the "should have known" position if they did not get a survey when the bought it. Owner when the f ence was erected and did not object would be in the same position. One is required to know what they own if they want to protect against AP.
"But your honor, I did not know it was on my land" won't fly in court.
On Sunday, September 1, 2013 9:13:01 AM UTC-4, Unquestionably Confused wrot e:
That's precisely the point, the the rightful owner *is* the one paying the taxes on the land. And as I've said, I've seen statutes for adverse possession that specifically require that the AP be paying the taxes. If the AP believes that piece of property that is his neighbor's is actually his, then why isn't he acting like a legitmate property OWNER and paying the real estate taxes on it? He knows property is taxed. He thinks he's getting this for free? If no one is paying the taxes, that's one thing. But when the rightful owner by title is paying the real estate taxes, I think any court is going to take that into strong consideration versus someone arguing that they are now the rightful owner because a fence is off by 6 ft. Also, I've seen state statutes where they specifically rule out de minimus claims of adverse possession over a fence that is a few feet off, like this one.
Until such time as there is a judicial
BS.
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"Definition from Nolo?s Plain-English Law Dictionary
A means by which one can legally take another's property without paying for it. The requirements for adversely possessing property vary between states , but usually include continuous and open use for a period of five or more years and paying taxes on the property in question."
I think it means they knew the OP was using all the land on his side of the fence.
Hostile looks at things from the OP's pov. Pemitted or not refers to the original owner's pov.
The parties are reverese in my case compared to the OP's. I'm the original and legal possessor. I'm in the process of writing up a license for my n'bor or his agent to walk on the part of my lawn he thinks he owns, to mow the grass, and to trim the bushes. He's actually had my permission from the beginning, but now I'm putting it in writing and will file it with the county clerk's office.
OTOH, he has indicated to some degree hostile possession. Once when I was mowing the lawn, and once when I was up on a ladder trimming the bushes, he told me "You don't have to do that". when I said I think I do, the second time he said "Sometimes I'd like to knock your head off."
Yeah but nothing about taxes in this statute.
Maybe not. There is surely an absence of case law on a lot of things in little Maryland.
I think it means the taxes are irrelevant.
It true for me and probably everywhere that the amount of taxes I owe is partly dependent on how much land I have, and that means if the ownership actually changes hands to the OP, each tax bill shoudl be recalculated, and that the "real owners" have overpaid their taxes for years, paying for the land they no longer own, and may have lost retroactively. But I don't think dollar amounts matter in deciding if AP applies.
What who pays the taxes is meant to show is who thinks he owns the land. Very few people calculate their square footage and check on the rate per square foot and multiply and compare that number to the tax bill, and then complain if it's different, and more importantly, the OPs two neighbors probaby never did that. They pay whatever the bill says, so their paying is not an indicium of their owning the displuted land.
ANOTHER BIG PROBLEM WITH TAXES is a direct result of the owners' problems. How does the owner prove the taxes he's paid covered the land in question. He'd likely have to get someone from the tax office to testify that they considered the original owner to own the land in question when they, the tax office, calculated his taxes.
This is also not an issue with a separate parcel of land, where each party claims all of it.
I dont' think so. On the separate parcel paying taxes means one thinks one owns the land. Here, it only means he doesn't know how much land he owns, how much the taxes are meant for, or he wouldn't pay taxes for land beyond the fence.
I do. FWLIW I asked on the legal group about my own property, where the issue is the boundary, and though silence doess't mean much, no one who replied brought up taxes. If I post there again, I will ask about taxes.
And, if I end up in court, I will definitely mention that I've been paying the taxes. Thank you for pointing it out...... Thinking about this for the first time: He of course will say, How do you know you've been paying the taxes? We haven't estabilished where the boundary is.
I will say, Yes we have. Look at the plat. That's what matters. The plat is hard to read because of all the things marked on it, but with help he should be able to read it. . Amazingly in a way, it's a little easier to read on the computer, where I can enlarge it a lot more than I think I could with a magnifying glass.
My property is 6-sided, which is where some of the confusion comes in. The neighbor's is 4-sided, and he may think mine is too. Also I have a fence and the land in question is outside the fence. He probably thinks any land outside the fence is his. Although for the first several years he lived here, I and only I mowed the lawn and trimmed the bushes there. So he might just be pulling my chain, though he sure seems sincere.
(I also have a survey, which I have to look at again but I think it's easier to read.)
Paying taxes is not part of openness. Onlookers don't know who pays how much for what land for taxes. When you mail the money in, they don't open your mail, and if you pay on the net, they haven't hacked your computer (and shouldnt' be required to.)
Openness refers to what the neighbors can see and what the original owner could see if he looked.
I got the impression that the second footnote on the page the OP posted pointed to a list of all appealed cases related to the statute. And this list seemed to match the list of "annotations" in the second column on the OP's page.
Except for the fact that they don't have a date on either page, as usual, and we can't tell how recently it was updated. Of course pocket parts only come out once a year too. But there is also an unsorted list of court decisions that comes out monthly or weekly. Before preparing for trial and again before going to trial, a lawyer should check cases on that list to see if any are relevant to his case.
If I were you, I would go down to your Property Registry or Land Titles Office and ask to speak to one of their lawyers. They'll have many.
Explain your situation without giving any details, and ask whether you now have acquired your neighbor's lands by adverse possession or not.
If so, then I'd go ahead and build the new fence where the old fence was, and just be glad that things have come to rest in your favour.
Land is valuable, and if your neighbors have not missed that part of their land that you've been maintaining up till now, they won't miss it in the future.
It is in my world. If you believe you own a piece of property, you better be paying the taxes on it, or at least nobody better be. You sit there for 10 years, let the neighbor pay the taxes on a piece of property you claim to own, you don't pay, and that is open? I'd say you're hiding what you're up to. If you were legit, you'd be paying the taxes.
Onlookers don't know who pays
Onlookers aren't the issue.
When you mail the money in, they
Irrelevant
I'd say you're not open, that you are in fact a sneak, if you knowingly allow someone else to pay property taxes on a piece of land you own. Some states agree, because it part of their AP laws. In order to claim adverse possession, someone else, ie the rightful owner, can't be paying the property taxes. The person making the AP claim has to be paying them. Sounds very reasonable to me.
So what? It doesn't prove that the neighbor knew the land on the other side of the fence was actually his.
Permitted or not clearly involves both parties. If one party agrees to allow the other to use their property, then it's permitted and not hostile.
In that case, what makes you think he's going to sign the agreement you're drawing up?
There may be in the case law.
It's hard to imagine that in an entire state there hasn't been a single case where the issue of who paid the taxes on a piece of property in an AP case hasn't come up.
Clearly in some states it does, because unless you've paid the property taxes on the piece of land, you can't assert AP.
Again, some states have laws that say it does indeed matter.
He's paid taxes on the lot. He has a survey and title that show where that lot begins and ends. Good grief!
He'd likely have to get someone from the tax
Again, it is in states that say you can't use AP if you have not been paying the taxes on the property.
That's reassuring.
If I post there again, I will
And why is that? You don't have a title? A survey with pins in the ground?
Good luck with that. I can't fathom any government person (and ESPECIALLY a governmental atty) who would give you an actionable yes or no answer. There would be too much liability if you acted on their statement and the judge disagreed.
As I said, I don't think the neigbor has to know this. It's not in the statute and no case is listed related to this. he only has to know that someone else is using the land.
That's one case, if he agrees.
If he doesn't agree, if he says nothing but still permits it, then its permitted but it may also be hostile.
If permission and no hostility were locked together. if they were the same concept, then they wouldn't be listed separately in the Eunuch rule, or some statutes.
Permission doesn't require any thoughts or awareness on the part of the actual owner. He doesn't have to *give* permission. If he sees or could see what's going on and does nothing, that's permission. Or put more accurately, the actions by the adverse possessor are permitted. It's non-permission that takes at least a little effort on his part.
I don't expect him to. I'm giving him permission. He then has it whether he wants it or not. The lawyers on the legal ng agreed that giving permission is unilateral.
If you tell your kid, You can go out to play. You don't have to be back until 6, he has permission to go out and not come back until 6 whether he wants to go out or not.
Not in Oregon afaict.
AIUI, lowest level courts don't make precedent and their decisions are recorded but not reported in "reporters". They apply only to the case at hand. Unless they are appealed, then the decision gets listed in the Annotated Statutes of Oregon, and what I incorrectly said was probably called the Northwest Reporter. Actually it's called the Pacific second Reporter, I think.
If you look at the cases in the second column of the OP's statute page, Annotations, there are two citations for each one. The first includes " Or App " , Oregon Appellate, and the second includes "P2d", which I think is Pacific second, meaning they closed out the original Pacific series and started Pacific second. For example, "Exclusivity requires use consistent with ownership, not physical exclusion of all others. Slak v. Porter, 128 Or App 274, 875 P2d 515 (1994)". The numbers 128 and 875 are volume numbers in the series. The numbers 274 and 515 are page numbers in the respective books.
But what I really know is that wrt to a couple of statutes that I was involved in, there were no notes referring to cases with issues that had anything to do with any issues in my case.
I'ld like to see the exact words. I'll bet it's talking about cases where the whole parcel is claimed by the AP, not some chunk of his neighbor's land.
He may or may not have a survey. Either way, I'll have to think about this. ............
The deed only refers to the plat, no meets and bounds..
AFAICT, there are no pins in the ground, not for my lot and not for the whole subdivision. I borrowed a metal detector and looked. My lot is in the corner of the subdivision, so there maybe should have been a pin for the whole area there, not just my lot, but there wasn't.
If it gets to court or even maybe before that, I think so.
Don't know the tiny details yet, but I'll file the paper with the County Clerk's office, just like a contractor files a lien or bank files a mortgage. (I called the county clerk and whoever answered saw no problems. There's probably a short form to fill out and a fee to be paid.) I'll also send him a certified letter with the letter of permission (a license?) and some background, in case he's forgotten. And some making nice.
I had single women living on both sides of me for a couple years, who were polite but not too friendly, and I understood that. When one of them sold her house to a single guy, I hoped we'd be friends. I still don't know what I did that annoyed him. I've asked him and he doesn't answer and I've told him what the only thing I can imagine is, and how that would be a misunderstanding related to the fact I thought he was a lot younger than he is and had never owned a home before. And that's true, but he hasn't said that was the reason. . He's polite, but he's still not friendly, and he's angry when I mow that little piece of lawn.
Years ago I asked him to go for a drive so we could talk about it. He declined, but seemed a little friendlier afterwards.
At one point I offered him in a letter 250 dollars for new stereo equipment (or whatever) to reimburse him for his mowing my grass and trimming the bushes,(even though he started with the bushes because he didn't like the way I was trimming them, not because they weren't trimmed) but he didn't reply. Later I realized that another neighbor, a guy in his 20's, was mowing the lawn, not him. This guy mows the front lawns of 3 of his n'bors. I'm not sure if he charges them or not. They're little, 20 feet by 25 feet, but if he doesn't charge it's still very nice of him. I told him the little triangle was mine, not the neighbor's, but he still mows it, and usually before I would.
I also realized that the n'bor doesn't trim the bushes either. Somehow he got the HOA to do that. I wrote the HOA telling them it was my land and they don't need to waste their money havng the landscaping company do that, but that letter was ignored too, perhaps because the corrupt 20 year president of the HOA doesn't like me (or most other people.) . The letter of permission will have a sentence giving them permission too.
So in other words, the neighbor has done precious little to maintain the land but it's hard for me to say how much because I'm not outside when he is. I cut my offer of 250 down to 125.
I've done trimming, weeding, mulching, spraying weeds under the bushes, mowing, and spraying the lawn for weeds, but a) not that much of it, and b) most people haven't seen me do any of it, since usually no one is outside when I'm doing these things.
On top of all of this, the landscaping company in the last 2 or 3 years, once a year in the spring cleans up the bed around the bushes and makes the bed 1/2 inch bigger on each side. That's bad because the bed for the previous 32 years had indicated my property line on each side. That's a big reason why I tried to get them to stop.
Everywhere I've lived property tax records are public information. I can find out exactly what my neighbor paid in taxes and whether they're delinquent on their taxes. This information is often published in the newspaper. NSA is not required.
or it. The requirements for adversely possessing property vary between stat es, but usually include continuous and open use for a period of five or mor e years and paying taxes on the property in question."
YOu claim to have "seen statutes requiring it" Should be simple for you to come up with a cite then.
I got title to an abandoned country school lot bordering my place by AP. Ho w? Under Washington law AP takes 10 years except IF one pays the taxes on it only 7years is needed. Lawyer looked up the law and came up with the so lution dthat I pay the back taxes on it for the last 7 years. Done deal
Note that there is nothing in the AP law REQUIRING having to pay the taxes, only that if one does it only takes 7 years.
That still doesn't necessarily make it adverse or hostile to the real owners interest. The real owner starts with an interest in it, and it was it would appear, his yard. For the neighbor to ALSO be using it as "yard" is not necessarily hostile to the actual owner. The fence might be worth a claim of exclusive use if it truly prevented the real owner from getting to it IF HE WANTED TO but since it's most likely not topped with barbed wire that could also be a questionable claim.
I think hostile is tied in with the adverse part. The two words are intended to convey the notion that the interlopers use prevents, thwarts, or takes over the use of the land buy the real owner in a way that is detrimental to the real owners interests. That such use is actually "hostile", i.e. detrimental, harmful to the what the real owner intended the land to be used for. Think of a sand and gravel pit out in the boondocks. A owns the land but has done nothing with it B comes along and start taking sand and gravel from it. A knows about it be just lets it go on. That's what I would consider hostile use along with open and notorious. Let that go on for 10 years and A might find out the B now owns a gravel pit.
All the owner needs to do is say "Hey, I see you've been mowing my lawn. The darn contractor built the fence in the wrong spot. I was going to have him move it but he said he'd rebate me $1000 bucks if I left it where it is. So I did since I have plenty of space. You can use it until I need to rebuild the fence someday." and things can go like that forever with on adverse possession possible.
But like you said, and as with any of these kinds of situations, you can never be sure what a judge might decide. For all we know there is a ton of case law that covers this that would easily settle this if we had a law library.
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