Adverse Possession

Ever seen Child's Play, where Chucky the doll gets infected by an evil spirit and starts to murder people? Or maybe Annabelle (basically same premise)? Christine (killer demon car)? The Exorcist? These are all adverse possessions, but not the kind we're talking about here.

Outside of the supernatural, "adverse possession" refers to a situation where someone improperly encroaches on someone else's property. Basically, if you try to move into someone else's house without asking their permission, that's adverse possession. So all you twenty-somethings still living at home, we're looking at you.

In some cases, though, the adverse possessor has something of a case. There's a legal concept known as "squatter's rights," where a person can make a case that they own a property because they have lived there long enough. Such a term makes it sound like something that only came up in the Old West, a Heaven's Gate-style conflict between farmers and ranchers set against a wide and lawless landscape.

But it can also come up in more mundane ways, like if a neighbor unwittingly builds a fence a few feet into your property, but no one notices for a decade before one of you tries to switch insurance providers or sell your house. Now, hopefully without resorting to a gun fight in the town square, you've got an adverse possession case on your hands.