Legally claiming land after years of continuous farming

Dear Mrs Macaulay, 

There is land that my family has been planting crops on over the years; the owner of the land died many years ago and did not have kin or relative to look after or use the land. I believe checks were made at the land department and no taxes have been paid for the land. I would like to know if I can legally claim this land to put a structure on it and how can I go about that.

I understand from your letter that your family had entered the land owned by a now deceased person, many years ago. That your family had been and is still planting crops on the land and reaping the crops, since your entry on the land and up to this present time. You have not stated how many years your family has occupied the land. It also seems clear that your family was never required to deliver a portion of your crops to the owner of the occupied land at any time of your planting while he was alive and neither he nor anyone-else ever made any objection to your family’s occupation and cultivation of it.

So, if your family, as it seems from your letter, entered upon the land peacefully and remained on it, cultivating your crops and that you continued to be in possession and in effective control of the land for the requisite number of years necessary for your family to have acquired it be adverse possession, then you could apply to be registered as the legal and beneficial owners of the land. It would help if your family immediately go and pay up all the outstanding land taxes due for the parcel of land and continue to do so each year thereafter. Your family members who entered and have been in occupation cultivating the land can be the applicants who can apply to be registered as the owners either jointly or as tenants-in-common. This would be the fairest way to deal with ownership, so that none of you will feel aggrieved by being excluded from sharing equally in the ownership. All the relevant costs to start and complete the process should also be equally shared. If it was you who entered and was cultivating the land all the years for your family and not a family of several adults (which I have already addressed), then you can as the person who effected the occupation and controlled the planting and reaping and selling of your crops, legally claim the land, pay the back taxes and make the application to be registered as the legal and beneficial owner of the land by way of your adverse possession for what I sense is a period of many, many years which may be more like 20 or more years.

You must go and consult a lawyer when you will be in a position to give more detailed facts of your occupation of the land and about the deceased owner and who will then be able to give you more specific advice than I can from you very short with hardly any helpful facts. You will need assistance to also prepare to make your application, as you must deal with the outstanding taxes, you must also have a survey done and the plan submitted for lodging at and approval by the Survey Department. The plan must be submitted with your application, which you will need help to complete and submit for processing and for the issue of the registered title, either in your sole name, or in the names of more than one person, either as joint owners or tenants- in-common.

Joint owners own the property jointly, together they hold the whole property with equal interests in the land and they cannot leave their interest to their beneficiaries in their last wills and last testaments nor can it go to their estate on an intestacy; whereas tenants-in -common hold their interests in the land separately, so they can each leave their portional interest in their last wills and testaments to their beneficiaries and if they leave no will it goes to their estate on their intestacy. All this can be explained to you in detail so that you understand every facet of the legal requirements and what would be best for you and your family. So, please go to a lawyer experienced in land matters and the law to assist you and your family so that you can obtain the subject land legally and have it duly registered.

Despite this, I hope that I have at least clarified the issues for you so that you have some understanding of what would be required to be done by you and your family to apply for and be registered as the legal and beneficial owners of the land, with the legal assistance I have suggested so that all will end successfully. All the very best!

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public, and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.

DISCLAIMER:

The contents of this article are for informational purposes only, and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.