ADVERSE POSSESSION – REVISION NOTES
Adverse Possession – The possession of land by someone other than the
registered proprietor or unregistered owner (PTO), without that proprietor or owner’s
consent. Commonly known as “Squatter’s Rights”.
It means you may become an owner, it is a way of getting rights to a land.
*PTO = Paper Title Owner
Why to allow it happen?
There are three reasons:
- Need for some limitation on the owner ability to assert his/her rights. Is right
that if somebody lived there for 50 years can be told to go away because the owner
came back after 50 years?
- Land is a finite resource – “Buy land, they are not making it any more” Mark
Twain
- Curing defects in unregistered land - If somebody loses documents it is hard to
prove that they are the owners, whereas person living there has a proof of their
existence on the land, regardless of lack of documentation. (Relativity of title)
Pye v Graham [2002] UKHL 30 – (Unregistered Land / Voiding protracted
uncertainty)
“In the case of unregistered land, and in the days before registration became the
norm, such a result could no doubt be justified as avoiding protracted
uncertainty where the title to land lay. But where land is registered it is difficult
to see any justification for a legal rule which compels such an apparently
unjust result, and even harder to see why the party gaining title should not be
required to pay some compensation at least to the party losing it”. – Lord
Bingham
Land Registration Act 2002 (Aim) – Registration should of itself provide a means
of protection against adverse possession.
Adverse Possession – The possession of land by someone other than the
registered proprietor or unregistered owner (PTO), without that proprietor or owner’s
consent. Commonly known as “Squatter’s Rights”.
It means you may become an owner, it is a way of getting rights to a land.
*PTO = Paper Title Owner
Why to allow it happen?
There are three reasons:
- Need for some limitation on the owner ability to assert his/her rights. Is right
that if somebody lived there for 50 years can be told to go away because the owner
came back after 50 years?
- Land is a finite resource – “Buy land, they are not making it any more” Mark
Twain
- Curing defects in unregistered land - If somebody loses documents it is hard to
prove that they are the owners, whereas person living there has a proof of their
existence on the land, regardless of lack of documentation. (Relativity of title)
Pye v Graham [2002] UKHL 30 – (Unregistered Land / Voiding protracted
uncertainty)
“In the case of unregistered land, and in the days before registration became the
norm, such a result could no doubt be justified as avoiding protracted
uncertainty where the title to land lay. But where land is registered it is difficult
to see any justification for a legal rule which compels such an apparently
unjust result, and even harder to see why the party gaining title should not be
required to pay some compensation at least to the party losing it”. – Lord
Bingham
Land Registration Act 2002 (Aim) – Registration should of itself provide a means
of protection against adverse possession.
