WISCONSIN SOCIETY OF LAND SURVEYORS - LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE

Co-sponsorship – Continuing Education Credits for Land Surveyors, Engineers, & Other Design Professionals – LRB 0857        Currently most professional organizations in Wisconsin have various licensing and registration requirements to ensure a high quality of workmanship in the industry and protect consumers.  A continuing education credit requirement is oftentimes included in this process.

This bill would allow the Examining Board of Architects, Landscape Architects, Professional Engineers, and Land Surveyors to establish continuing education requirements that a person must complete in order to renew his or her credentials.

The continuing education requirement will help ensure that land surveyors and other engineering professionals will keep up-to-date on the latest industry practices and regulations, and will help to maintain the high quality of service they provide to Wisconsin consumers.  Currently, 29 out of 50 states have a continued education requirement for license in these fields.

This legislation is supported by:

American Council of Engineering Companies  

Wisconsin Society of Land Surveyors 

Northeast Wisconsin Chapter of the Wisconsin Society of Land Surveyors 

        Under current law, a party who does not have actual legal title to real property, but who occupies, uses, or maintains the property for a specified, uninterrupted period of time under a claim of title may, in a court action, establish title to the property against the true legal owner of the property. This process is known as adverse possession. Generally, the adversely possessed property must be enclosed (by a fence, for example) and cultivated or improved.

        If the adverse possessor’s claim of title is not based on a written instrument or court judgment, the property must be adversely possessed uninterruptedly for 20 years for title to be established in the adverse possessor. If the adverse possessor’s claim of title is based on a recorded written instrument or court judgment, the property must be adversely possessed uninterruptedly for ten years. If the adverse possessor’s claim of title is based on a recorded written instrument or court judgment and the adverse possessor has paid the real estate taxes on the property for the entire time of adverse possession, the property must be adversely possessed uninterruptedly for seven years.

        The adverse possessor need not be the same person for the entire time. The times during which property is uninterruptedly adversely possessed by any number of persons in succession are added together to reach the necessary total number of years. Likewise, the person who holds actual legal title to the property being adversely possessed need not be the same person for the entire time during which the property is adversely possessed.

Representative Mike Sheridan

DATE:   February 12, 2007

RE:     CO-SPONSORSHIP OF LRB-0025/1, relating to limiting adverse possession

I am introducing LRB-0025 to address a serious problem with the current adverse possession statute and to protect Wisconsin property owners.

Last year, I was contacted by a former constituent who was struggling with an adverse possession claim against a piece of property he had purchased and was building a home on  The constituent, Michael McNett, had purchased the land based on survey stakes and had no idea that his neighbor had a potential adverse possession claim against the property.  It turns out that his neighbor had been maintaining a portion of the property through regular lawn maintenance for the last thirty years without objections from the previous owner.  Shortly after Mr. McNett started to build his dream home, his neighbor built a fence 13 feet onto the McNett property and took Mr. McNett to court with an adverse possession claim.  While he had been paying property taxes on the property for several years, Mr. McNett was eventually forced to settle out of court because of rising legal costs. 

LRB-0025 would address this problem by simply requiring that the clock start over for any claims of adverse possession after any property transfer.  This would eliminate the chance that an individual could buy a piece of property only to have it stolen through an adverse possession claim that should have been made against the previous owner.