Rationales

"Courts and commentators generally ascribe to “four traditional justifications or clusters of justifications which support transferring the entitlement to the [adverse possessor] after the statute of limitations runs: the problem of lost evidence, the desirability of quieting titles, the interest in discouraging sleeping owners, and the reliance interests of [adverse possessors] and interested third persons.” Thomas W. Merrill, Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Adverse Possession, 79 Nw. U.L.Rev. 1122, 1133 (1984); see also Finley v. Yuba County Water District, 99 Cal.App.3d 691, 160 Cal.Rptr. 423, 427 (1979) (summarizing the rationales supporting adverse possession). Effectively, our society has made a policy determination that “all things should be used according to their nature and purpose” and when an individual uses and preserves property “for a certain length of time, [he] has done a work beneficial to the community.” Teisen, 3 A.B.A. J. at 127. For his efforts, “his reward is the conferring upon him of the title to the thing used.” Id. Esteemed jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. went a step further than Teisen, basing our society’s tolerance of adverse possession on the ideal that “[a] thing which you have enjoyed and used as your own for a long time, whether property or an opinion, takes root in your being and cannot be torn away without your resenting the act and trying to defend yourself, however you came by it.” O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal v. Ashcroft, 389 F.3d 973, 1016 (10th Cir.2004) (quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L.Rev. 457, 477 (1897))."