Acquisition of Ownership by Possession

In one line

Part IV of the Act is the part where time creates a title: twenty years of enjoyment gives an easement, and the expiry of the period for a suit for possession extinguishes the owner's right altogether.

Two different things in one Part

Read the Part as two separate ideas, because they work in opposite directions.

Sections 25 and 26 are ACQUISITIVE. Long enjoyment of a way, a watercourse, or light and air over someone else's land makes that enjoyment into a legal right, an easement, which the owner of the land can no longer stop. Something is created.

Section 27 is EXTINCTIVE. When the period for suing to recover possession of property runs out, the owner's right to that property is extinguished. Something is destroyed. What the possessor gains is a consequence: once the true owner has no right left, nobody can turn the possessor out, and his possession has ripened into title. That is adverse possession.

Both are called prescription, and both rest on the same instinct: a state of affairs that has lasted long enough should be recognised as the legal position.

Easements by prescription: section 25

What an easement is

An easement is a right that one person has over land belonging to somebody else, for the benefit of his own land. The land that enjoys the right is the dominant tenement; the land that suffers it is the servient tenement. A right of way across a neighbour's field, a right to run water through his channel, a right to have light come to your window across his plot: these are easements.

Section 25 says how long enjoyment must last before the enjoyment becomes a right.

The section

Section 25(1): where the access and use of light or air to and for any building have been peaceably enjoyed therewith as an easement, and as of right, without interruption, and for twenty years; and where any way or watercourse or the use of any water or any other easement, whether affirmative or negative, has been peaceably and openly enjoyed by any person claiming title thereto as an easement and as of right, without interruption, and for twenty years, the right to such access and use of light or air, way, watercourse, use of water or other easement shall be absolute and indefeasible.

Section 25(2): each of the said periods of twenty years shall be taken to be a period ending within two years next before the institution of the suit wherein the claim to which such period relates is contested.

Section 25(3): where the property over which the right is claimed belongs to the Government, sub-section (1) is read as if for "twenty years" the words "thirty years" were substituted.