Section 49 Adverse Possession Application

Galway_Girl_83

Hi - hoping somebody can shed light on a situation for me.

My husband and I are in the middle of a section 49 application for adverse possession on a small plot of land.

My husband’s father (now deceased) sold a small parcel of land with an old cottage on it to a foreign couple 20 years ago. The couple who bought it never came back to the property after purchasing it. My husband has been treating it as part of his own farm for the past 20 years, has used the old cottage for storage, has maintained the land and boundaries, etc. Nobody has been using the land except for him.
We wish to have the property registered in my husband’s name via a section 49 application.

Land Registry have come back to our solicitor with a number of queries on the application.

One of the queries is causing problems - land registry have said that they need to notify the current landowners of the pending application and have asked us to provide contact details for them.
We have their names but no contact details. We have contacted the local auctioneer, the solicitor who handled the sale, neighbours in our area and nobody has any information to assist. My husband’s father, who originally sold the property, died a number of years ago without leaving any information / paperwork behind.

Our solicitor has advised that land registry may insist on us finding these details, in which case we would have to hire a professional investigator to track them down. I’m sure this would be a costly exercise and I’m not sure we have the desire to pursue it. We would be tempted to withdraw the application altogether before spending a lot of money on something that may not exactly help our situation!

Not looking for advice, just for details of anybody else’s experience / outcome in a similar situation.


TIA!

schemingbohemia

Just try Facebook as a first step.

nuac

1. The solicitor who acted for the purchasers may have some contact details,

2. That solicitor may have advised the purchaser of the law in Ireland re adverse possession and to take certain steps e.g. appointing a caretaker, visiting the place, keep fences in order,planting trees etc.

3. Contact the purchasers' embassy

4. Advertise in a paper in the purchasers' original area.

In Ireland we had waves of non-national purchasers e.g from U.K. in the late forties, West Germany in the early sixties. Some didn't return, some do after many years. All sorts of reasons

Galway_Girl_83

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Just try Facebook as a first step.

Have tried that and done various searches online with no results unfortunately!

Galway_Girl_83

nuac wrote: »

1. The solicitor who acted for the purchasers may have some contact details,

2. That solicitor may have advised the purchaser of the law in Ireland re adverse possession and to take certain steps e.g. appointing a caretaker, visiting the place, keep fences in order,planting trees etc.

3. Contact the purchasers' embassy

4. Advertise in a paper in the purchasers' original area.

In Ireland we had waves of non-national purchasers e.g from U.K. in the late forties, West Germany in the early sixties. Some didn't return, some do after many years. All sorts of reasons

Thanks for taking time to reply!