Build House on WRONG lot - Sue landowner for cost of house

[HOUSTON RICK]

I don't know about Hawaii, but in Texas if you affix immobile property to someone else's real property - you just made a gift.

 

[30-30remchester]

I took a surveying class once and the instructor told of owning his house next to a large farm. Every year he would "encroach" onto his neighbor's property by 10' and move his fence. He also took photos and dated them on his new fence line. In Colorado if you meet the required provisions, you can legally possess another's property. The main criterias are you must, after the encroachment "be open, be hostile and exclusive" for 17 years and it is yours. In other works declare it as yours openly and refuse anyone else usage.

 

[Bald1]

I couldn’t help myself so I looked up Adverse Possession in NY…… if you continually use someone else’s property for 10 yrs uninterrupted you can make a claim to that property. To me that says if i trespass on my neighbors land for 10 years it’s mine?!?!?!?! I’ve never herd of Adverse Possession before reading this post. It’s crazy to me. In typical NY fashion, let’s reward the dead beat squatter or irresponsible person. Hopefully other states deal with this differently

 

[LVSteve]

I couldn’t help myself so I looked up Adverse Possession in NY…… if you continually use someone else’s property for 10 yrs uninterrupted you can make a claim to that property. To me that says if i trespass on my neighbors land for 10 years it’s mine?!?!?!?! I’ve never herd of Adverse Possession before reading this post. It’s crazy to me. In typical NY fashion, let’s reward the dead beat squatter or irresponsible person. Hopefully other states deal with this differently

You think it's bad in NY, in NV it looks like 5 years is all that is required. Mind you, given that 80% of the land here is owned by the federal government, pick your battles might apply.

 

[arjay]

I remember a case in Boulder where a retired judge had taken adverse possession of a 25’ strip of his neighbor’s property. Boy was the publicity ugly. They sold and left town shortly afterward. The neighbor had no clue what he was up to until it was too late

 

[ACORN]

When I had my knee surgery in 2017 I was not going to take any chances. I remembered how Andre Thornton, who was a first baseman for the Cleveland Indians at the time, had a hospital mess up and operate on the wrong knee. I wrote "Wrong Leg" on my good leg. The nurse was not amused and scrubbed it off. But the surgeon later came around and signed the leg with the bad knee. I figured it was an easy way to avoid a serious mistake.

There was a local case where a man was supposed to have a leg amputated but the surgeon amputated the wrong leg. They then had to remove the “correct” leg. He sued for malpractice but the court threw out the case.
The court ruled the plaintiff didn’t have a leg to stand on.

 

[Golddollar]

I couldn’t help myself so I looked up Adverse Possession in NY…… if you continually use someone else’s property for 10 yrs uninterrupted you can make a claim to that property. To me that says if i trespass on my neighbors land for 10 years it’s mine?!?!?!?! I’ve never herd of Adverse Possession before reading this post. It’s crazy to me. In typical NY fashion, let’s reward the dead beat squatter or irresponsible person. Hopefully other states deal with this differently

Ten years sounds like an awful short statute of limitations. I've usually seen adverse possession established after 20 or 21 years, but that's the choice of each state.

Adverse possession is sort of a two-edged sword. It does provide a means to deprive a record owner or those claiming under that record owner of their land. That is probably why there are fairly long periods of time before a person intending to claim land by adverse possession can go to court and ripen his claim. The other side of the coin is providing a means for extinguishing "stale claims" to land and putting abandoned land back into commerce.

However, the requisite open and hostile occupation of the property does not automatically vest title in the adverse possessor. The title insurance companies I acted as agent for would not insure title to land claimed by adverse possession until there was a Court decree under a quiet title action declaring that title to the land was vested in the adverse possessor by properly established adverse possession. And to get that decree is where the fun really begins.

Back when I was still working a client came in wanting to quiet title to a tract of land. There were deeds put on record for something like 30 years, but then there was a gap in the written chain of title of about 120 years more or less. The next deed that could be found was executed during the Civil War. Courts have decreed that whenever the government is being asked to take property from a person or persons, there must be a reasonable effort to identify, locate and notify such parties in interest. The idea is to give such parties notice of the proceedings and an opportunity to attend the proceedings and be heard. Just sticking a sign on the property as a first step is nowhere near enough.

Well guess who got the job a identifying, locating and notifying the descendants of the property owners under that Civil War era deed? After going through the land records and estate records in the courthouse, I established a list of 8 pages of parties who had to be listed as defendants in the quiet title case. And using that ancient device, the telephone book, I was able to locate quite a few of them. Each party we were able to locate received a copy of the petition to quiet the title to the subject property. Posting property is kind of a last ditch effort to notify the persons we couldn't directly give notice to.

Believe it or not, out of those 8 pages of possible interested parties, one party actually stood up and came to court to contest the quiet title action. The court determined that the adverse possession was properly established and title to the property was declared to be vested in our client.

Yes, it was a lot of work, but the law had declared we could do no less. I figure the fact that a party in interest came forward to contest the case proved that we did things right.

 

[Golddollar]

There was a local case where a man was supposed to have a leg amputated but the surgeon amputated the wrong leg. They then had to remove the “correct” leg. He sued for malpractice but the court threw out the case.
The court ruled the plaintiff didn’t have a leg to stand on.

< < < < rimshot < < < <

 

[Imissedagain]

There was a local case where a man was supposed to have a leg amputated but the surgeon amputated the wrong leg. They then had to remove the “correct” leg. He sued for malpractice but the court threw out the case.
The court ruled the plaintiff didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Does this qualify as gallows humor?

Jan 1968.
Newest member of the USAF's Hazard Survey Team said,
"Sarge, can I call my Mom and let her know I may die as
we might have to go to Thule to find the lost Nuke."

"That's classified young man, so just write a letter and give it to your First Sergeant", was my reply.

"What's the point of these rubber suits? If the HE doesn't kill us these suits won't stop the radiation and we'll have a slow miserable death", he asked.

My reply, "then they can just put a postage stamp and your home address on the rubber suit and mail your melted body home.
Makes it easy for the cleanup crew."

Took him a few seconds to start laughing and it
calmed him down.
We were at Castle, on standby, and were told to stand down
not long after the accident.

Some of us had lotsa extra chores besides our main mission.

 

[bullmack]

I can relate to this. I've been working for 4 years on historical ownership of several lakeshore properties non Vermont. Ownership traces back to the late 1700's. Many properties do not have bearings - just a direction and distances - in chains, rods, and links. Often the corner reference is a tree that is typically long gone or a rock. Then there's the fact that everything was handwritten and used phraseology that eventually died away.

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

I can relate to this. I've been working for 4 years on historical ownership of several lakeshore properties non Vermont. Ownership traces back to the late 1700's. Many properties do not have bearings - just a direction and distances - in chains, rods, and links. Often the corner reference is a tree that is typically long gone or a rock. Then there's the fact that everything was handwritten and used phraseology that eventually died away.

Kinda like asking directions out in the country and you get something like this" "Take the road a bit, turn left at Johnson's tractor shed go down to where the old movie theatre used to be before it burned down in '47 take a left and it is right next to Ms. Bessie's house"

 

[03hemi]

I came home from work one day and there was orange ribbon across the entrance to my driveway. It’s 170 feet long with a 2 car wide turnaround. Someone sealed my blacktop driveway. I know it’s a $500-$600 job because I’ve gotten estimates before doing it myself in the past. There’s a little sign in grass with company name. I call and tell them what they did. The woman initially said I owe them money. I said actually you owe me money for trespassing and property damage because your crew did a horrible job….. they actually did a nice job and I had no intention of paying. I just wanted to mess with the woman because she was being stupid about things. Eventually my neighbor 2 doors down comes over to say they did your driveway instead of mine. I got you a free seal job Then stood there looking stupid like I owed him money or something.

Uh, thanks?

 

[HOUSTON RICK]

The reason behind adverse possession is to keep the tax roles up to date, he who owns the property is responsible for the taxes. A big factor here where the local governments are financed by property tax. Several times folks have waived on an unexpected inheritance once they found out the tax bill to take possession.

 

[llowry61]

Funny things happen in new housing developments. We were the first house built in our section of the development. We had 4 4ft tall Blue Spruce trees left on our lot while we were at work. I kept the balls watered assuming someone would come looking for them eventually. After 10 days I planted them. No one ever asked about them. We had building supplies left and came home a couple of times with hoses attached to our exterior water spigots. I started shutting them off at the frost-free valve in the house. We had a concrete company dump excess concrete on our lot. The builder had a crew come break it up and haul it away then restored the hillside. We had drywall crews camping out in vans while they did houses. I never want to be the first house in a subdivision again. The mud when it rained and the dust when it wasn't. Learned my lesson on that one.

 

[Golddollar]

Years ago I represented some homeowners in a small development on the edge of the Arapaho national forest. The homeowners were in a dispute over the proper allocation of the annual fees to the HOA or adjacent lots.

I always look at the original subdivision filing. This one was a beauty: the thing was layed out with the most intricate meets and bounds description I’ve ever seen. Using the meets and bounds description, I determined that it was incomplete: it didn’t describe a complete block.

Image a property description of a rectangle but missing the fourth side. Its insufficient to convey property.

End result: everyone was mad at me because we needed to file a quiet title action and resurvey the subdivision. Some lots turned out to be smaller or in a slightly different location than the property owners thought. There were some disputes about garages on property lines.

We ultimately got it sorted. I got a fee, of course.

It only takes one twisted bearing to turn the description for a parcel of land into a disjointed line. When working off a new survey, we would have two people review the legal description that was going to be put in the new deed. One person would read the written description ALOUD and the other person would follow along on the new survey. We caught a lot of mistakes and kept them from getting into the new deed.

 

[Doug M.]

The probable reason for naming the property owner is that all possible parties need to be named/part of the litigation to ensure all rights are adjudicated and all are bound by it.

This one reason we insist on good insurance coverage in all of our contracts. Some folks do not apply careful consideration to what they do, and while we contract for proper performance, "stuff" happens.

 

[tomhenry]

I have a 4 acre lot in Alaska that I haven't seen for 25 years. I wish someone wold build a nice cabin on it

What's the address?

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

That's pretty bad . My wife had surgery on her ankle and when she went in that morning everybody that was involved in the prep verified which ankle with her and the surgeon even marked her ankle with a Sharpie .

Prior to my eye surgery. A nurse gave me a sharpie and said put an X under the eye to be operated on.

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

Locally the Highway Department claims easement "30 feet from highway center line".
( It is for a rural road in the county.)

Deceased surveyor wrote a plat citing "60 feet from highway center line."
(I believe the plat along the same highway, was for a sub division.)

A friend recently bought one of the platted lots with the 60 foot citation.

Bekeart

TWO pins on my eastern boundary are in the center of the highway.......Plat was made long, ling ago when road was dirt. SCDOT gets/got approx. 1.1 acre of my land........Not worth the haste of fighting over.

 

[SMSgt]

Kinda like asking directions out in the country and you get something like this" "Take the road a bit, turn left at Johnson's tractor shed go down to where the old movie theatre used to be before it burned down in '47 take a left and it is right next to Ms. Bessie's house"

Years ago in the AF, we had to write specific directions for someone to follow to find us while on leave. Your "instructions" sound very much like what a KY country boy who worked for me wrote down. How does one know where "the old oak tree used to be" is?