What are squatter's rights?
Question Details:
My husband has been taking care of the property next to us for about 12-15 years, mowing, trimming, cutting of bad trees, etc. The property belongs to his mother; she refuses to sell to him. However, she will sell to his other siblings. He is the only one that was adopted out of the 4. Does he have any rights? I have found a law, "Squatter's Rights Law". Is that in effect here in KY? And if so, would it be worth to pursue?
What is commonly called "squatter's rights" is, for ownship of property, actually something called adverse possession. Unfortunately, adverse possession means possessing the land *adversely* to another's interests--trying to take it over, knowing that it belongs to someone else. If there was no intention to possess the land and take it from another, or if the other person allowed the first one to be on or use the land, there is no adverse posssesion. In particulary, not living or building on land in order to stake a claim in it, but instead caring for someone else's land, does NOT give anyone rights to that land. Unfortunately, what your husband did is to gift his labor and services to his mother.
So in this case, he probably does not have any rights in or two the land, and he should probably rethink continuing to provide free labor. At the least, he might try to be paid for his work.
