Also known as: successive disseiser · successive disseisors · successive disseisin · tacking · adverse possession chain
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
Adverse possessors who occupy land in succession without privity of estate between them. Their periods of possession cannot be tacked unless a good-faith mistaken-boundary exception applies.
Steven Silva and two successive independent squatters each occupied a disputed lakeside strip for seven years under a mistaken boundary claim. No conveyance or landlord-tenant relationship linked the squatters. The true owner prevailed because the periods could not be tacked.
Two unrelated squatters successively occupied a rural parcel for five years each, with no deed, lease, or other link between them. Neither claimed the land under a good-faith boundary mistake. The record owner regained possession because neither period could be added to the other.
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A first squatter held a strip of woodland for nine years. A second unrelated squatter then held it for six more years. No conveyance connected the two holdings and no mistaken-boundary claim was shown. The true owner defeated title because the statutory period was never met by any single chain.
Tacking is permitted when successive possessors share privity, such as through a landlord-tenant relationship or a deed conveying the claim of right. Without privity, the periods of successive disseisers cannot be combined.
Supporting sources
Yes. When claimants and their predecessors use land under a good-faith belief it is their own due to a mistaken boundary, tacking of successive periods is allowed even if the possessors are not in strict privity of estate.
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Each disseiser must independently satisfy the full statutory period. No tacking occurs, so the true owner is not ousted until one possessor alone meets the entire limitations period.
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…in quieting titles and protecting against stale claims. Brown, supra , § 4.3 at 38. The majority and better view is to permit tacking, the accumulation of consecutive periods of possession by parties in privity with each other. Lesnevich, supra , 56 N.J. Super. at 357; see also O'Connell v. Chicago Park Dist. , 376…