| Court: | WA Supreme Court |
| Facts: | McKnight marries a woman with two children. They have a third. Then they move to Seattle and buy two houses: big and little. Wife dies intestate, estate never probated. McKnight has been in possession of the properties, has paid taxes, has made improvements, and rented out the little house while living in the big house. He gets remarried, and asks one of the kids for a quit deed. This maybe alerts everyone... |
| Posture: | Appeal from judgment for the kids, I think. |
| Issue: | Did McKnight get title to the house via adverse possession? Should he have to pay occupancy charges? |
| Holding: | No adverse possession. He should pay rent. |
| Rule: | A cotenant isn't an adverse possessor. There's no worry about laches, either, because no evidence was lost or obscured. It is proper to hold people accountable for income. |
| Reasoning: | In WA at that time, if you die intestate, all property goes to your children, not your surviving spouse. So that is what happened. Laches (i.e., exploiting the situation by delaying) is an equitable doctrine, so maybe the court doesn't want to consider it because the fact he asked for a quit-claim indicates he knew what was up all along. |
| Dicta: | Dissent: even a stranger to the title would have less liability than this (there's a statutory limit). |