Sunday, September 1, 2013

A declaration of adverse possession

One of the fun things about law school and lawyering is learning about arcane facets of the law. For no particular reason I have always loved the law of adverse possession, by which a person can become the owner of property by simply using it, openly, continuously, exclusively (acting like they own it) hostilely to the deed owner, for 21 years. I have always wanted to adversely possess property.

Our cabin has a right of way over the piece of property that abuts the road. My rant about the people who own that property will be saved for another time. What I will say is that Terry and his dad mowed that property for the very first time all summer back in September (we regularly mow the piece that is our right of way). Since then we have let the kids play freely on it whenever we are at the cabin.

I need to do more research, but I learned at a CLE recently that somewhat recent caselaw states clearly that simply mowing the property is enough possession to count in Pennsylvania.

I am hereby declaring that September 2013 is the month in which we began to adversely possess this piece of property. Check back in 2024 whether it's ours!

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