Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

You are thinking of eminent domain, which still exists. All homeowners are now given automatically homestead protection which protects a dollar value of the home against creditors.

I don't know where Mr. Shers gets the concept of eminent domain from. Eminent domain is the taking of real property by a public entity. It appears that you are confusing homestead exemptions with the historical homestead act and adverse possession.

You don't provide enough information to determine whether you have a legitimate claim of adverse possession. You would have to quiet title in your name first, before any homestead exemption to the property attached,

Four concepts mentioned in the preceding answers:

1. "Homestead" in the 19th-Century sense.....if a pioneer farmed the land for a period of years, he could claim it from the United States Government. I believe this program was terminated in the 1920s due to lack of suitable land, but it may have continued in Alaska a little longer. One can no longer obtain land from the government by homesteading.

2. "Homestead" also refers to the interest a homeowner has in his dwelling place, which is somewhat protected from seizure by creditors under either the "automatic" or "declared" homestead laws. This kind of homestead is for the protection of debtors and has nothing to do with getting free land from the government.

3. "Eminent domain" is the theory giving the government the right to take land from ordinary citizens by condemnation for public purposes, such as building a new road. The government is required (in most cases) to pay the fair value of the land taken.

4. "Adverse possession" also occasionally called "squatters' rights." refers to a legal principle that if someone occupies land continuously for five or more years, openly and adversely to the interest of the owner of record, the owner of record cannot bring an action to reclaim the land and the adverse possessor may bring an action to quiet title in his name. There are several quite technical requirements and meanings given the terms used. Among others, the adverse possessor must have paid all the property taxes, and his possession must have been without permission.

In your case, it's possible your 25 years of residency may qualify you under the adverse possession laws, but there's a lot to prove including payment of the property tax and that the possession was "adverse," i.e., the owner didn't give you approval to live there by renting it to you, or saying, in effect, "It's OK with me if you want to live in grandma's old house that I inherited, I don't need it."