Where's the property line?

Q. This is a simple question, but one I’ll bet a lot of your readers have. We’re having a dispute with one of our neighbors regarding our property line. Even with an old survey in hand, how do you determine exactly where a property line is? Our neighbor is claiming that the area along our common line is his because he landscaped it and takes care of it. He told us it’s “squatter’s” rights and he can legally claim it as his after so many years, maybe 10. Can he really do this, and how do I fight it? I got an attorney who is “looking into it.”

A. Squatter’s rights are also known as the legal term “adverse possession” as well as my favorite, “grand larceny,” which was the way it was explained to me by the chief zoning attorney for a large city zoning board. Although anybody can steal anything and anybody can sue anybody for anything these days, there are rules and laws regarding this kind of stealing. In 2007, Gov. David Patterson signed a regulation that disallowed adverse possession claims, except in extreme circumstances, and a zoning attorney was kind enough to share the wording of the law with me. He explained that, since then, several challenges have been made to the law. The law, from biblical times, has been an evolving process, filled with debate about what-if scenarios, and although I’m not an attorney, I find the process fascinating, especially since I deal with a large set of different laws in my field that is unfamiliar to many attorneys, but equally filled with debate and challenges. Nevertheless, stealing is stealing.