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In the United States, a man who owned a property worth more than $100,000 was forced to sell it after a court fight with his neighbor who asserted squatter’s rights. The title to the undeveloped land that Burton Banks, a financial advisor with an Atlanta address, inherited from his deceased father had to be transferred to Melissa Schrock because of Delaware’s obscure adverse possession legislation, according to the New York Post.
The land plot, which is vacant and undeveloped, was chosen to sell in 2021 by Mr. Burton and his husband David Barrett, according to the outlet. But they found that his neighbor, who had built a goat pen there for many years and was using the roughly two-thirds of an acre parcel valued about $125,000, was actually using the land.
Mr. Burton filed a complaint to make Ms. Schrock abandon the property after she resisted for several days. He brought her to court to try to get his property back, but Ms. Schrock asserted her squatter rights. Notably, Delaware’s squatter’s rights, also known as adverse possession in the law, enable people to legally occupy a piece of property for at least 20 years before claiming ownership of it.
A Delaware Superior Court judge’s ruling that his neighbor, Melissa Schrock, had a claim to the land in February forced Mr. Burton to transfer the title. The judge mentioned that Mr. Burton and his wife mainly resided in Atlanta and “only occasionally” visited the Delaware site. It was challenging for them to persuade the judges that Ms. Schrock had not freely used the land for the previous few decades due to their infrequent visits to the state.
Mr. Burton has stated that he can no longer afford to file an appeal, but he hopes he can at least warn others. He disclosed that his father had given Ms. Schrock’s mother a nearby lot, and that after her death, she had given the land to her daughter. A different neighbor, unlike Ms. Schrock, also had an animal enclosure that was too close to the property. However, that neighbor consented to have it removed.
