Can you adversely possess a life estate

In this case, therefore, A wrongfully enters against someone who owns a fee simple absolute, whereas in the previous case, A wrongfully entered against someone who only owned a life estate. So what does A get? What estate does A get in the land? The two main issues are: 1 Who are you possessing against? It can only be someone with a possessory interest. A acquires by adverse possession the estate of the person who was in possession when A wrongfully entered.

So if the current possessor has a life estate, A gets a life estate. If the current possessor has a fee simple absolute, A gets a fee simple absolute, and so on. In the second case, if either B or C brought a lawsuit against A before the statute of limitations ran, either one could defeat adverse possession.

C would bring the suit in his own name, but he would assert that he was acting on a right derived from O. This is a common pool problem. Two people own an interest in the same land at the same time. If A wasted stuff for long enough, he could get adverse possession against C. The point of this is not primarily to learn more about adverse possession, but rather to demonstrate the difference between possessory and non-possessory interests in land.

The estate is a thing. You can only have adverse possession against a particular estate. The defeasible fees. These are also known as fee simple conditional. Here are the wonderful cash and prizes you get when you get a fee simple defeasible:.

You get possession without condition! There is no condition precedent to your estate becoming possessory. In , he deed the property to the Church. In , Father deed the entire property to his daughters, reserving a life estate. That deed arguably contained an exclusion for of the Church land, but for purposes of this discussion, we will assume that this exclusion was invalid, as the Church tried to avoid litigating the issue of the validity of the exclusion by arguing that it owned the land by adverse possession.

The reason that the issue came up at all is that in , in the course of a dispute between Father and te Church, the Church deeded the property back to Father. Thus, if the exclusion was not valid, the daughters held the remainder interest in the property, including the Church land, which accrued to their interest by operation of after acquired title.

In any event, the Church continued to occupy the property from forward. The father died in and the daughters some time thereafter sought trespass damages and declaratory relief on the theory that they owned the fee interest following the Father's death. The trial court, likely desiring to dodge all of this complex analysis of the validity of the exception and the application of after acquired title, submitted the facts to the jury on the theory of adverse possession.

On this point, the court found that adverse possession had not run because prior to it was the father, and not the holders of the remainder, was the party entitled to possession of the property pursuant to his reserved life estate.

By the argument of the Church, its adverse possession would have commenced at the time that the Church deeded the property back to the Father in That was after the Father had created a remainder in the daughters with a reserved life estate in himself.

An adverse possession that commences against a life tenant will take only the life tenant's interest, and the adverse possession period must run again if the possession continues after that tenant's death.

As the court pointed out, this would have been in , and the Mississippi ten year statute would not have run before the daughters brought this action. Unfortunately for the daughters, their victory was short lived.

The court then moved to the issue of the validity of the exclusion of the church property from the deed to the daughters. It concluded that the exclusion was valid, albeit somewhat ambiguous it stated only that "the Lot for the Church be taken off". Other evidence cured the ambiguity as to the property in question.

Further, although Alabama requires two witnesses to a deed, there was no requirement that an exclusion on the face of a deed must be separately witnessed if, as here, the exclusion was initialled by the Father and the Father and the witnesses signed the deed. Comment 1: The editor chose this case because it applies modernly a doctrine commonly stated in the law books, but which some lawyers may forget upon graduation - adverse possession will not run against a remainder interest if it commences during the preceding life tenancy.

You have to start counting all over again when the life tenant dies. A life tenant is the owner of a life estate. A reversion is that portion of a fee estate that continues in the grantor after the grantor has conveyed a life estate. For example, when A conveys a life estate to B, the portion of the fee estate remaining in A is a reversion. In this example, A is both grantor and a reversioner. A remainder is a fee estate created in a third party other than the grantor that does not become an ownership interest until the life estate is terminated.

It is a future possessory interest that vests immediately upon its granting. For example, when A conveys a life estate to B, with the remainder to C, the fee estate conveyed to C is a remainder. C is a remainderman. A life estate can be created by deed, will, trust agreement, or by operation of law for example, under the homestead , dower, and courtesy laws of some states, a surviving spouse may receive a life estate in the real property of the deceased spouse.