Adverse Possession Defense
Aug 10, 2010OUTCOME: The neighbor's attorney did not know adverse possession law at first, but the evidence with photos, and persuasive educational correspondence, soon led to settlement by an agreement to drop the case and allow the fence to remain.
I represented a couple who could not afford an attorney to defend against a neighbor that filed a legal action to force my clients to move their fence ten feet into their residential back yard. The nei ... ghbor just purchased the adjoining land when a survey showed my clients' fence was ten feet over the boundary line according to the legal descriptions on both deeds. I was able to prove the current fence was in the same location as a prior fence, constructed more than ten years previously, that appeared to be the correct location based on fences of neighbors on both sides. Of course they all were in the wrong place. Nevertheless, WA law limits the right of the property owner to complain about that fence location to ten years. After ten years, "adverse possession" law entitles the fence to serve as the legal boundary line.
