{"id":628,"date":"2012-06-08T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=628"},"modified":"2023-12-21T17:17:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T17:17:05","slug":"adverse-possession-based-on-occupation-not-intent-to-dispossess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2012\/06\/08\/adverse-possession-based-on-occupation-not-intent-to-dispossess\/","title":{"rendered":"Adverse possession based on occupation not intent to dispossess"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Massachusetts Land Court has reaffirmed the longstanding rule that occupation of property is sufficient to \u00a0make it &#8220;adverse&#8221; or nonpermissive.\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/masscases.com\/cases\/land\/20\/20lcr114a.html\" target=\"_blank\">Kissinger v. Frankelton,<\/a>\u00a0MISC 10-420652 (Mass. Land Ct. Mar. 8, 2012).\u00a0Adverse possessors need not know they are occupying land of another or intend to wrest it from the control of others. Such a requirement would reward land pirates and deny protection to longstanding good faith possessors. While this rule is long established and sensible, it is remarkable how many cases revisit it, perhaps because some lawyers did not pay attention in law school and continue to argue that &#8220;adverse&#8221; possession depends on the adverse possessor&#8217;s knowledge of intrusion onto the property of another and intent to take it.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"taxonomy-category wp-block-post-terms\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/adverse-possession\/\" rel=\"tag\">Adverse Possession<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Massachusetts Land Court has reaffirmed the longstanding rule that occupation of property is sufficient to \u00a0make it &#8220;adverse&#8221; or nonpermissive.\u00a0Kissinger v. Frankelton,\u00a0MISC 10-420652 (Mass. Land Ct. Mar. 8, 2012).\u00a0Adverse possessors need not know they are occupying land of another or intend to wrest it from the control of others. Such a requirement would reward land pirates and deny protection to longstanding good faith possessors. While this rule is long established and sensible, it is remarkable how many cases revisit it, perhaps because some lawyers did not pay attention in law school and continue to argue that &#8220;adverse&#8221; possession depends on the adverse possessor&#8217;s knowledge of intrusion onto the property of another and intent to take it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adverse-possession"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}