ALBANY — New Yorkers will no longer be able to simply mow a neighbor’s lawn for 10 years to claim the property as their own.

For the rest of the story:

‘Adverse possession’ law revised : Business : The Buffalo News

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Of course, all the other neighbor has to do is mow that lawn every now and then and the law would no longer apply.

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I have to wonder about people that ignore their property, or somehow don't notice another person mowing and maintaining it for ten whole years, and then suddenly getting upset that they've lost it.

How oblivious do you have to be?

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

We have a small easement on our property for someone's driveway. They have their landscapers mow and take care of it. Once every few months, my husband mows it, simply to keep it ours. We own it, even though she has the right to use and maintain it.

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They may have moved away. Just leaving the property for later use.
They may just look out there window and see someone else mowing there lawn and say hey less work for me. There is no reason to steal there property for those reasons. That is what a law like this allows, theft.

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May your paradise always be green, you liberties always be full, and may the ignorance of you enemies not drive you to be pro-nuke.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself
into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and
trying to lift himself up by the handle."-Winston Churchill

Ehh. I have no problem with those laws. Ten years is a very long time to ignore a piece of property. In fact, it's rather contemptuous, maybe even borderline hostile towards the property values of the neighbors. And, if someone takes the initiative to claim it adversely, and you can't rouse yourself to even care.....

I have to question the involvement of the woman who lost that 1/8 acre. Sounds like she only started caring when she lost it.

I wonder why this became an issue out there, anyway? We have huge tracts of desert crap right in the middle of town that nobody's doing jack with. Lots of land gets zoned, split and sold as pure speculation, and we're powerless to put a stop to it, unfortunately. Makes the city look like hell.

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

As I said in the grass cutting thread people have no right to control other people's property. They have no protection of property value, just property. Long or not it is theirs.

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May your paradise always be green, you liberties always be full, and may the ignorance of you enemies not drive you to be pro-nuke.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself
into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and
trying to lift himself up by the handle."-Winston Churchill

Obviously, they agree with you.

I wonder how common adverse possession really is, and why those old laws have lasted so long?

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

The article talks about whether or not an adverse claim is challenged or not. I think that's the key, here. If I put a garage or even a house on your plot and you don't even bother to object -- for ten years-- that passes a reasonable test that you've abandoned rights of claim.

I'm just not buying Denise Przybylo's apparent claim that she had no clue that something was built on her land. Mind blowingly oblivious. If we have something like that around here, I've never heard of it being invoked. Sounds like the revision puts some stricter perameters on it, which is probably good.

I just don't understand why anyone would own a chunk of land, pay property taxes on it, and just have it sit around uselessly. Not saying that's bad or anything, just very, very odd, to me. Seems like a great way to lose money.

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

Really I do not know. There have been more weird laws than this.

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May your paradise always be green, you liberties always be full, and may the ignorance of you enemies not drive you to be pro-nuke.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself
into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and
trying to lift himself up by the handle."-Winston Churchill