Adverse Possession

Today I'm frustrated with the orchid lace swatch, can't find my mohair mobius project, and didn't have a chance to photograph the cotton triangle shawl I finished on the way to Eagle River last week. What I did do is prepare a very short presentation for the networking group my office belongs to, since boss lady is sick and I had to substitute this morning. So you get that instead. (By the way, I'm not an attorney and this is not legal advice and all disclaimers apply and you know the deal.)
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Back in the 1800's when Wisconsin became a state, the surveyors of the time did their best to measure and plot out the land into nice neat townships and parcels. However, this was a time before GPS, and errors were inevitable. Some of those nice even squares overlap onto other nice neat even squares, and there are gaps, and . . . well, you can imagine. Additionally, back in the day it was not uncommon for people to simply pack up and head for the gold rush or whatever, so there needed to be a mechanism in place to assign title to land which was abandoned. And so, we get the principal of adverse possession.
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If you can prove that you have been in open, obvious, and continuous possession of a piece of property for X years (the number changes from state to state, and some even throw in the conditions like "notorious" and "exclusive"), you can start a court action claiming title to the land. Unfortunately, so can your neighbor - so it's important to know where your boundary lines are, and to make sure that anyone using any of your property to park their RV or to store that extra wood pile or whatever acknowledges in writing that it's your land and they're only using it with your permission.
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My favorite case on this topic was in Georgia (I think), where someone tried to claim the land because their family had been picnicking on that spot every Labor Day afternoon for 30 years. But we see cases all the time where the fence row wasn't really on the line, or the neighbor was just helpfully mowing that extra 20 feet between your lots, or the driveway paving was a foot onto the neighbor's property and nobody noticed, or whatever. And even if you win the lawsuit, you'll probably be out the cost of attorneys and surveyors and whoever else gets into the act.
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Anyway, I'm just saying.
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