- Jurisdiction
- Connecticut
Up for debate is wether we have legal claim to a strip of border land between two properties.
The land in question is roughly 50 feet long by 4 feet wide at its largest and 2 feet at its narrowest. It's hourglassed shaped. This strip of land is between two driveways.
Before I was born our bordering driveway was grass. In the early 80s my parents had gravel laid in our driveway, and in the mid 2000s had the driveway paved.
The grass strip that separates both driveways is property that my father, then myself always maintained in terms of mowing the lawn. It's too small of an area of land to do anything with aside from putting a fence up or what have you.
There was never a discussion of the property nor a debate to who owned the land and since we always cared for it, assumed it was ours.
I do not know the exact date but maybe a year or two after the driveway was paved we came home to a survey pin hammered into the driveway and the neighbor told us he did a survey and this was on his land. The amount of driveway that hangs onto his surveyed land is about 5 inches wide at its widest which doesn't last long and about 15 feet long. The property line is straight so the encroached area is a long arc. I can post a photo of the survey if it would help to visualize
Before the driveway was paved there was never a dispute. We maintained the strip of land as if it was our own.
Do we have a case for ownership of this land under adverse possession? I would think our maintaining of the land between the two driveways for over 30 years and laying the driveway as if the land was ours is enough to give us legal ownership. If not the entire strip of land we cared for, what about the encroaching driveway? Being grass then gravel there was never any distinct line that we could show that would either confirm or deny that the paved driveway is larger than the old gravel driveway. For what it's worth, the driveway is wide enough to only fit one car at a time with roughly 8 inches of paved driveway between a centered automobiles tire and the grass area in question.
Thanks for any insight
The land in question is roughly 50 feet long by 4 feet wide at its largest and 2 feet at its narrowest. It's hourglassed shaped. This strip of land is between two driveways.
Before I was born our bordering driveway was grass. In the early 80s my parents had gravel laid in our driveway, and in the mid 2000s had the driveway paved.
The grass strip that separates both driveways is property that my father, then myself always maintained in terms of mowing the lawn. It's too small of an area of land to do anything with aside from putting a fence up or what have you.
There was never a discussion of the property nor a debate to who owned the land and since we always cared for it, assumed it was ours.
I do not know the exact date but maybe a year or two after the driveway was paved we came home to a survey pin hammered into the driveway and the neighbor told us he did a survey and this was on his land. The amount of driveway that hangs onto his surveyed land is about 5 inches wide at its widest which doesn't last long and about 15 feet long. The property line is straight so the encroached area is a long arc. I can post a photo of the survey if it would help to visualize
Before the driveway was paved there was never a dispute. We maintained the strip of land as if it was our own.
Do we have a case for ownership of this land under adverse possession? I would think our maintaining of the land between the two driveways for over 30 years and laying the driveway as if the land was ours is enough to give us legal ownership. If not the entire strip of land we cared for, what about the encroaching driveway? Being grass then gravel there was never any distinct line that we could show that would either confirm or deny that the paved driveway is larger than the old gravel driveway. For what it's worth, the driveway is wide enough to only fit one car at a time with roughly 8 inches of paved driveway between a centered automobiles tire and the grass area in question.
Thanks for any insight
