Then the letter arrived.
A law firm envelope. Thick. Official.
Brenda was suing me.
She claimed ownership of the land through adverse possession, arguing that because her garage had existed there for over twenty years without dispute, the property was legally hers now.
I hired a lawyer, Mr. Peterson—quiet, precise, and brutally honest.
“She has a claim,” he explained, “but it’s weak. Adverse possession requires hostile use. No one knew the garage crossed the line. You can’t claim rights over something you didn’t knowingly take.”
Still, it meant months of stress and legal fees I wasn’t prepared for.
We ordered a second survey. Same result. Then we dug into property records going back decades.
That’s when everything changed.
The properties were once a single lot owned by a farming family. Two brothers split it in the late 1970s. One built my house. The other built Brenda’s.
