As a practical matter I think this mostly confuses adverse tenancy with adverse possession. The latter case, of squatters gaining full legal title to a piece of property, is extraordinarily rare, and as I understand it the cases all tend to be marginal (like: abutments of adjacent rural properties changing hands). Adverse tenancy is somewhat more common: you can establish through your actions an expectation that you're a legitimate tenant, and it can be legally obnoxious to remove a tenant.
The cases Patrick describes in this piece aren't really about adverse possession, but rather about property sales where the seller (or the seller's seller, etc) doesn't have the full legal authority to sell in the first place, and the people who do show up later to contest the sale.
Yes, I think what most people think of when they think of "squatters" in the US is a much different dispute over tenancy, not title. Most (all?) places in the US it is possible to be a legitimate tenant without any lease agreement, although I've found many people aren't aware of this. The term "squatter" is used for a broad spectrum of issues of tenancy, many of which aren't at all clear-cut. The current popular take on the issue might be that it's some kind of loophole or problem with the law which should be summarily handled, but the root of the issue is simply that cops aren't courts that can't perform complicated eviction proceedings, even if one party claims that the issue is simple (because it might not be).
Adverse position cleans up title, because the conditions are basically live in it and fufill the obligations of an owner for X years, and you are the owner.
So if many years later, someone comes out of the woodwork to claim a fradulent conveyance, it doesn't matter. You lived in it and paid taxes as if it was yours for 10 years (or whatever), so either it's yours by conveyance or yours by adverse possession, and it's too late to undo the transfer.
I think that the case that Patrick describes leads straight into the intended case for adverse possession. You need to extend the timeline a litte.
Okay, so Bob owns a house. Bob marries Jane in an ill-advised, quickly ignored ceremony, but never gets formally divorced. Bob sells his house (in a community property state) to Ted. Ted lives in the house for 20 years. Jane dies. Jane's son Rick goes through her stuff, realizes that she was still married to Bob, realizes that Jane had a legitimate claim on the house that Ted has been living in for 20 years.
This is a classic adverse possession situation. Ted has been openly and notoriously living in this house, acting as owner. If Rick presses his claim, it is likely that Ted can win an adverse possession claim (assuming that Ted lives in a place where adverse possession still works the way it basically did in common law).
I did gopher work for Title Insurance company one summer. This type of stuff is so common in certain areas. Another common one we saw similar to "X party has claim no one realized" was "Property was passed down generation from generation and now someone wants to sell it and lack of clear title emerges because property is still in long dead grandparents name."
> The latter case, of squatters gaining full legal title to a piece of property, is extraordinarily rare, and as I understand it the cases all tend to be marginal (like: abutments of adjacent rural properties changing hands).
The marginal cases are more common certainly, but the full version does happen. There's one that comes up on Reddit every so often of someone living in a home that had been abandoned in the 2008 crisis and presumably just written off by the legal owners (sounded like it had been owned via multiple levels of bankrupt property companies) for long enough that they claimed ownership, apparently successfully.
The one I see on Reddit is "Texas guy buys $300,000 house for $16" (the registration fee), but he was evicted less than a year later. I'd love to see the case where someone succeeded in holding the house! I did go looking, but it's just yard fence after yard fence in the court cases.
The cases Patrick describes in this piece aren't really about adverse possession, but rather about property sales where the seller (or the seller's seller, etc) doesn't have the full legal authority to sell in the first place, and the people who do show up later to contest the sale.