Adverse possession; “Hostile”; Clear & cogent proof; Doctor v Turner; “Claim of right”; Smith v Feneley; Prescriptive easement

Concluding that plaintiff failed “to allege that her possession of the land was under a claim of right that was hostile to the record titleholder[,]” the court held that the trial court erred in granting her summary disposition to quiet title based on adverse possession. Further, for the same reason, she failed to allege a prescriptive easement and the trial court erred in granting her one. According to the complaint, she “was given permission ‘to permanently affix a trailer to the said property.’ While the trial court made much of the fact that ‘[p]ermission to affix a trailer is vastly different than digging out a basement and constructing a home’ because ‘[a] trailer can be moved right off,’ that reasoning overlooks the fact that the permission granted was to permanently affix the trailer.” In addition, and regardless of whether her “subsequent improvements to the property exceeded the scope of that permission—plaintiff’s complaint overtly recognizes” defendant’s superior title. “It says that she and her husband ‘improved this property over the years on the promise that [her husband’s grandmother] would convey the property’ to them. [It] similarly acknowledges that, upon the passing of plaintiff’s grandmother-in-law, the title passed to plaintiff’s father-in-law, who ‘continued to honor his mother’s promise to convey the property’ but that plaintiff ‘understood that this conveyance could not happen until’ a mortgage was first paid off. In other words, [her] complaint explicitly acknowledges that her possession of the land was not under a claim of right that was hostile to that of the record owner. Rather, she alleges that [it] was consistent with the record owner’s plan to retain ownership until a future conveyance. For the same reason, plaintiff also did not allege a prescriptive easement.” The prescriptive easement claim was “inextricably linked to her claim of adverse possession. She asserts that she and her husband used a portion of the parent parcel ‘for purposes of ingress and egress’ to the claimed parcel. However, because her complaint acknowledges that defendant’s title is superior and that she used the property with permission by the terms of a previous family arrangement, she has not pleaded any claim of right.” Reversed and remanded for entry of an order granting defendant summary disposition.