Originally posted by Platypus
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In the eighties I was in the process of buying a house with land at the back.. The solicitor flagged up that not all the land had been properly registered to the current owner. It turned out that the current owner had bought a strip from another neighbour which consisted of the top end of my back garden plus an access lane to it, This was something like 20 years previously but they hadn't used a solicitor because that would have cost more than the land itself. The receipt he had was apparently not good enough as proof of ownership, even though signed by witnesses etc. The original owner of the land had died some years previously.
My solicitor's explanation was that if possession of the land had been contested for 14 years the house vendor could have claimed the land as his own, receipt or not, but since it hadn't been contested, adverse possession didn't apply.
(I'm pretty sure I remember the 14 year figure correctly, even though it doesn't agree with the 12 years quoted up thread.)
The upshot for me was to either get the vendor to sort it out or to get the house revalued without that bit of land, for mortgage purposes. The vendor sorted it out, but I suspect he had to part with some cash to the current owner of the house which the land originally belonged to.
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