Property
Class Notes
Problems on Teson
Say
O is ten years old when P took possession.
Would the action be barred? No, it
appears that O has a total of 14 years to bring the suit because he has until
he turns 21 plus three more years.
Why
does the statute contain the language “the person or his heirs”? Say, for
example, a person dies a day before their 21st birthday. Also, sometimes the thing that renders
someone incompetent can never be cured.
If
you really have a 10 year old landowner, why can’t that person’s guardian take
responsibility? Braunstein suggests that
this might be a good reason to abolish these disabilities because they go again
society’s interest in certain and marketable title. He can see how this statute could result in
injustice in particular cases.
What
if O was 15 years old when P took possession?
In that case, the action would be barred if O was 25 because O only had
until age 24 to bring suit. O either
gets seven years or three years past the age of 21. Make sure to calculate the time both ways. Say O was 20 at the time the adverse
possession enters. If O gets the full
seven years, O gets seven years. If O
gets the age of majority plus three years, he only gets four. You take the calculation that is most
favorable to the owner, thus O gets 7 years in this case.
What
if O was mentally ill when P took possession?
It would depend on several factors: Is O still mentally ill? If O is better, when did he get better? How old was O when the affair began?
The
law often weighs justice in the individual case against the public policy
interest behind the statute. Braunstein
doesn’t buy into the idea that this statute is going to do much justice.
Braunstein
proposes another problem with these disabilities. Say O would have three years to sue after the
age disability is removed. Let’s say
that on O’s 21st birthday, O goes crazy. Now what happens? On the face of the statute, it looks like O
gets screwed! We deem O incompetent
until he turns 21. Then let’s say he
goes crazy just before he turns 21. Then
it makes sense to say that the disability continues until it is resolved. The answer turns out to be that you can’t tack disabilities. Braunstein thinks that this is nuts! If disabilities are so important, then they
ought to get more protection. On the
other hand, if they are as unimportant as Braunstein believes, they don’t need
any protection.
Say
O is crazy, gets someone pregnant, and then dies. Now we have someone who hasn’t even been born
yet at the time of possession, and they get crap! The point is that you can’t tack disabilities.
Braunstein
can’t really figure why you get the extra time from this statute. It’s can’t just be because you need it.
There are many situations where you just get screwed. Braunstein thinks that these disabilities don’t
help much, and hurt the value of the statute of limitations overall.
How
about Problem 6? Why do we care about
all these different possessors? We have
a 20 year statute of limitations, and not even one possessor was there for 20
years. Recall the Keeven and Behle
deal. They had to tack to
What
is the standard for tacking? Tacking won’t
be used to protect successive trespassers.
There must be some relationship between
the successive possessors (privity of estate) that makes it reasonable to tack. This is a vague, fluid concept.
Intestate means you die without a
will. Think of the phrase “last will and
testament”. Since you don’t have a will,
somebody gets your property, and the
people who get the property are called the heirs
and are specified by statute.
A
has possession for 5 years and leaves the land to H (H is fine). H keeps the land for 3 years, and then
conveys it to M. M has possession for 2
years, and then M dies. M wills the
property to P who has possession for 5 years.
P conveys the property orally to X, who has it for 3 years. Is it a problem that it was conveyed
orally? No, because we’re not looking
for valid transfers, but rather voluntary transfers. All we want to do is preclude successive
trespassers. It’s not necessary to the
rule that we have something that would qualify as a legally enforceable transfer.
X leases the property to L, then X gets it back. Two weeks later, X joins the army and had D
take over the property. Assume being in
the military is not an abandonment.
Anyhow, we get up to twenty years.
D is the last person in possession.
D abandons Blackacre to O. But
you can’t abandon real property.
Now
there are two distinct issues. What kind
of relationship do we need between all the people in order to tack their
periods of possession?
We
end up with D as the owner of the property.
Then the question is: What do we need to have a valid conveyance of real
property to O? We would need to have a
written transfer! O is not an adverse
possession who is tacking, so you would need a writing that satisfies the statute
of frauds! So it would seem that D wins! Once we say someone is an owner, then in
order to transfer possession to someone else, they must satisfy the statute of
frauds.
But
O still has a chance! What’s his
argument? Maybe you could say that D
never became the owner of the property.
But what if D did own the property?
Is there something D said that indicates D’s intentions?
What’s
a mechanic’s lien? There’s a basic
problem with construction contracts involving real property. It applies to anyone who works on a
construction project. The only person
that the owner promises to pay is the general contractor. A mechanic’s lien is a way for someone who
does work on property without a direct contract with the owner to use the
property as collateral for the payment of services. In this case, a mechanic’s lien was used by
the adverse possessor to try to recover the cost of the improvements made to the
land in the true owner’s absence.