The Battle For Land That Isn't Yours

Sometimes property that does not belong to you can belong to you.

The doctrine of 'adverse possession' is an old legal principle that allows an individual to effectively take legal ownership of another property, if they can establish that they have "openly" and "notoriously" occupied the land for long enough.

The law was eventually codified and modernized in the Real Property Limitations Act, which means that the application of adverse possession is extremely limited today.

First, for adverse possession to apply to a property, the possession of the land needs to have started at least 10 years before the property in question was converted from the Land Registry system (the old system of registering properties in Ontario) to the Land Titles system (the new system).