AS TO REAL PROPERTY AND RIGHTS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

AS TO REAL PROPERTY AND RIGHTSAuthored

The Law Mind • 981 words

Definition

"As to real property and rights" is not a standalone substantive term but a classificatory heading used in legal reference works to organize rules — particularly statutes of limitations and procedural doctrines — as they apply specifically to interests in land and to the rights that attach to or run with land, rather than to personal property or personal claims. In the context where it most commonly appears in historical dictionaries, it introduces the framework governing when and how long a claimant may assert a right of entry or bring an action to recover real property.

The essential rule under this heading is temporal: rights to recover real property, or to make legal entry onto land, are typically subject to a twenty- or twenty-one-year limitation period running from the moment the right of entry or cause of action accrues. Because real property interests are layered and sequential — involving present possessory estates, future interests, remainders, reversions, and servitudes that vest at different points in time — the limitation period does not run uniformly for all parties at once. Each interest-holder's clock starts when that party's own right to assert a claim first becomes available.

The heading thus functions as a gateway to a body of doctrine addressing:

1. When a limitations period begins to run against a particular claimant (accrual rules by interest type)
2. How successive and future interests affect the running of limitations
3. What kinds of rights in land — possessory and non-possessory — are subject to the rule at all

Core Elements

Because the doctrine is structured around the accrual of successive interests, the key analytical components are:

The nature of the interest: Whether the claimant holds a fee, a remainder, a reversion, an easement, or some other recognized interest in real property determines when the clock starts.

The moment of accrual: The limitation period begins when the right to enter or sue first becomes available — not before. A remainderman's period, for example, does not begin while the life tenant is in possession.

The length of the period: Historically stated as twenty or twenty-one years, varying by jurisdiction and era. Modern statutory periods in the United States typically range from five to twenty-one years.

Succession of claims: Because interests in land vest and become actionable at different times for different parties, limitations analysis must be conducted separately for each successive interest-holder.

Why It Matters in Research

This heading is a structural artifact of how Bouvier and other nineteenth-century legal encyclopedists organized the law of limitations. Researchers will encounter it not as a searchable legal standard but as an organizational marker in reference works, meaning the surrounding text — not the heading itself — carries the operative doctrine.

The most significant research trap is treating the twenty- or twenty-one-year period as a uniform rule. Bouvier's incomplete fragment (the source entry cuts off mid-sentence) points directly at the complexity: because interests "attach at different periods, and successively," there is no single answer to "when does the limitation run?" for a given parcel. The answer depends entirely on which interest is at stake and when it vested or became assertable.

For historical corpus research, material filed under this heading will often address adverse possession, the old real actions (novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor, and their successors), and the transition under nineteenth-century procedural reforms from the ancient real actions to ejectment as the standard remedy for recovery of land. Researchers working in pre-code American or English sources should expect to find both the old real-action vocabulary and its reformed equivalents treated under this general heading.

A further trap: the word "rights" in the heading is broad. Non-possessory rights — easements, profits à prendre, covenants running with the land — may be analyzed separately from possessory rights, and the limitation periods applicable to them may differ from those governing actions for possession.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus for this heading, and the available text is a fragment. It establishes the twenty- or twenty-one-year general rule and immediately signals its complexity by noting that real property rights "attach at different periods, and successively" — a direct acknowledgment that the heading introduces not a single rule but a framework for applying limitations analysis to a spectrum of interests.

What Bouvier's fragment does not supply — and what historical dictionaries generally handle unevenly — is a systematic treatment of future interests and the precise accrual rules for each. Nineteenth-century treatises on real property (Kent's Commentaries, Washburn on Real Property) and the English Statute of Limitations (21 Jac. I, c. 16, and its successor the Real Property Limitation Acts of 1833 and 1874) provide the fuller treatment that dictionary entries necessarily abbreviate.

Historical sources uniformly agree on the twenty-year baseline but differ on exceptions: disabilities of infancy, coverture, imprisonment, and unsoundness of mind were widely recognized as tolling the period, but their precise effect and duration varied between English and American authority and across American jurisdictions.

Jurisdictional Note

Modern American statutes of limitations for actions to recover real property vary significantly by state, ranging from as few as five years (e.g., California's adverse possession period under color of title with tax payment) to twenty-one years (Pennsylvania). Researchers should not import the historical twenty-year baseline into modern jurisdictional analysis without verifying the applicable state statute.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Property Law — Definition, Sources, and Overview (Real vs. Personal Property), The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia

AS TO REAL PROPERTY AND RIGHTSsubentry

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

The general if not universal limitation of the right to bring an action or to make entry, is to twenty or twenty-one years after the right to enter or to bring the action ac- crues, i. e. to twenty or twenty-one years after the cause of action accrues. As the rights and interests of different parties in real property are various, and attach at dif- ferent periods, and successively, it follows that there may be a right of entry in a par- ticular person, accruing after the expira- tion of antecedent rights at a period from the beginning of the adverse possession, much exceeding twenty or twenty-one years. Thus, if an estate be limited to one in tail, and the tenant in tail be barred of his remedy by the statute, yet, as the statute only affects the remedy, and the right or es- tate still exists, the right of entry in the re- mainder man does not accrue until the fail- ure of the issue of the tenant in tail, which may not happen for many years. The es- tate still existing in the tenant in tail or his issue supports and keeps alive the remain- der man's right of action till the expiration of twenty years after his right of entry accrues; 1 Burr. 60; 3 Binn. 374; 5 Bro. Р. C. 689; 15 Mass. 471. The laches of the owner of a prior right in an estate cannot prejudice the owner of a subsequently accruing right in the same estate; 4 Johns. 390; 8 Cruise, Dig. 408;2 Stark. Ev. 887. And where there exist two distinct rights of entry in the same person, he may claim under either. He is not obliged to enter under his earlier right; 1 Pick. 818; 5 C. & P. 563; 29 Ga. 855; 2 Gill & J. 173. Where it is necessary to prove that an actual entry has been made upon the land within a certain time before bringing suit, such entry must be proved to have been made upon the land in question; 3 Me. 316; Doug, 477; 4 Cra. 367; 11 Gill & J. 283; unless prevented by force or fraud, when a bona fide attempt is equivalent; 4 Johns. 389. If the land lie in two counties, there must be an entry in each county; though if the land be all in one county an entry upon part, with a declaration of claim to the whole, is sufficient; Co. Litt. 419; 3 Johns. Cas. 115. The intention to claim the land is essential to the sufficiency of the entry; and whether this intention has existed is to be left in each case to the jury; 9 Watts 567; 4 Wash. C. C. 367; 21 Ga. 118; 27 Ala. 864. An entry may be made by the guar- dian for his ward, by the remainder man or reversioner for the tenant, and the tenant for the reversioner or remainder man, being parties having privity of estate; 9 Co. 106; 2 Pa. 180. So a cestui que trust may enter for his trustee; 1 Ld. Raym. 716: and an agent for his principal; 11 Pa. 212; even without original authority, if the act be adopted and ratified; 9 Pa. 40. And the entry of one joint-tenant, coparcener, or tenant in common will inure to the bene- fit of the other; 10 Watts 296. Adverse possession for the necessary stat- utory period gives title against the true owner; but it must be open, uninterrupted, and with intent to claim against the true owner. The possession must be an actual occupation, so open that the true owner ought to know it and must be presumed to know it, and in such manner and under such circumstances as amount to an invasion of his rights, thereby giving him cause of ac- tion; 11 Gill & J. 371; 5 Cow. 219; 2 Pa. 438; 9 Cush. 476; 5 Pet. 438; 4 Wheat. 230; 149 Mass, 201; in Pennsylvania this rule has been announced with special distinctness. "The owner of land," says the supreme court in 1 Watts 341, "can only be barred by such possession as has been actual, con- tinued, visible, notorious, distinct, and hos- tile or adverse." See 95 Mich. 410; 97 Ala. 588; 144 U. S. 533; 69 Tex. 375; 89 Kan. 706; 84 Ky. 124; 23 Neb. 75. Title by adverse possession for a period such as is required by statute to bar an ac- tion is a fee simple title, and is as effective as any otherwise acquired; 7 Mackey 1. See 144 U. S. 533. A possession not actual, but constructive, not exclusive, but in participation with the owner or others, falls short of that kind of adverse possession which deprives the true owner of his title: 150 U. S. 597. Adverse possession must be open, so that the owner may know it or might know of it. Many acts of occupation would be un- equivocal, such as fencing the land or erect- ing a house on it; 7 Wheat. 59; 5 Pet. 402; 42 N. W. Rep. (Neb.) 915; actual improve- ment and cultivation of the soil 1 Johns. 156; building on land and putting a fence around it; 6 Pick. 172; digging stones and cutting timber from time to time; 14 East 332; 68. & R. 21; driving piles into the soil covered by a mill-pond, and thereon erecting a building; 6 Mass. 229; cutting roads into a swamp, and cutting trees and making shingles therefrom; 1 Ired. 56; and setting fish-traps in a non-navigable stream, building dams across it, and using it every year during the entire fishing- season for the purpose of catching fish; 1 Ired. 535. But e

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