The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a family in Loudon County will maintain ownership of 58 acres of farmland by virtue of a legal principle called “title by prescription,” which permits a person to establish title to land through possession and the passage of time.
In 1918, N.B. Bailey and his wife, Pearl, acquired approximately 100 acres of land known as the James Farm. Over the years, the property was divided into various parcels and passed down through the family for generations. Robert W. Bailey, the only son of N.B. and Pearl, inherited a 58-acre tract of the property in 1957. Robert and his wife and children farmed this land exclusively and without interruption for over 50 years.
Unfortunately, no one in the family was aware that N.B. and Pearl Bailey had purchased the James Farm during the “gap years,” a five-year period between 1914 and 1919 when estates of tenancy by the entirety were not in effect. Tenancy by the entirety means that a surviving spouse inherits all of the interest in land they owned together. In 2009, the family learned for the first time that Pearl Bailey, as a tenant in common rather than a tenant by the entirety, did not acquire a 100 percent ownership interest in the James Farm upon the death of her husband in 1948. Various family members, including Robert Bailey and his children, joined in a lawsuit to quiet title to certain portions of the property.
The trial court and Court of Appeals ruled that the 58-acre tract should be divided between the various descendants of N.B. and Pearl Bailey, even though Robert Bailey had possessed and farmed the land since 1957, and his children had done the same since 1983. The Supreme Court reversed, determining that because Robert Bailey and his children had enjoyed the exclusive and continuous possession of the land for more than 20 years, and none of the other family members had suffered from a disability that prevented them from asserting their rights to the property during that time, Robert Bailey and his children established their ownership of the 58-acre tract through the legal doctrine of title by prescription.
To read the opinion in Arthur Roberts et al. v. Robert Bailey et al., authored by Justice Gary R. Wade, visit the Opinions section of TNCourts.gov.