Opinion
No. COA07-147.
Filed 4 December 2007.
1. Adverse Possession — fee simple title — hostility
The trial court did not err by awarding plaintiff fee simple title to the pertinent two-acre tract of property even though defendant contends he owned the property by virtue of adverse possession, because: (1) even if it is assumed that defendant's parents were holding the property adversely on 3 June 1965 and that the altercation with the shotgun occurred on 31 December 1965, the trial court's finding of fact that there was no adverse possession from the shotgun incident until 1994 necessarily defeated defendant's claim of adverse possession; (2) the finding that defendant and/or his predecessors did not meet the hostility requirement for adverse possession after the 1965 shotgun incident until 1994 was supported by competent evidence when the deed granted defendant's parents a life estate in the property, plaintiff submitted an affidavit to the trial court that stated defendant himself had never asserted to her that he owned the property or was holding it adversely at any point, and defendant's parents acknowledged their limited life interest in the real estate in January 1986 and December 1992 on two separate deeds of trust and on a deed of easement in November 1992 with all three documents being notarized; (3) while the evidence with the shotgun was some evidence as to hostility, the evidence was competent to support the trial court's finding of fact that defendant's parents were not holding the property adversely against plaintiff in 1965; and (4) the payment of taxes by defendant and his family does not provide any evidence as to hostility since life tenants have the obligation to list and pay taxes on the property.
2. Appeal and Error — preservation of issues — unnecessary to determine issue based on prior ruling
The issue of whether the trial court erred in determining that neither defendant nor his predecessors in interest held the property under known and visible lines and boundaries does not need to be determined because the Court of Appeals already concluded that the trial court did not err by concluding that defendant and his predecessors in interest did not hold the property adversely for the requisite twenty years.
Judge TYSON dissenting.
Appeal by defendant Ervin Jones from judgment entered 6 October 2006 by Judge Dennis J. Winner in Orange County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 12 September 2007.
Alexander Miller, LLP, by Sydenham B. Alexander, Jr. and Meg K. Howes, for plaintiff-appellee. Levine Stewart, by John T. Stewart and James E. Tanner III, for defendant-appellant.
Ervin Jones ("defendant") appeals the trial court's order determining that Eleanor S. Pegg ("plaintiff) is the fee simple owner of a two-acre tract of property in Orange County, North Carolina. After careful consideration, we affirm the ruling of the trial court.
This is the second appeal to this Court regarding a property dispute between plaintiff and defendant. See Pegg v. Doe, 178 N.C. App. 742, 632 S.E.2d 600 (2006) (unpublished) (vacating and remanding the trial court's order for further findings of fact). On 11 May 2004, plaintiff filed a complaint against defendant to quiet title and for summary ejectment. Plaintiff asserted she was the fee simple owner of fifty acres in Orange County, North Carolina ("the property"). On 7 July 2004, defendant answered and counterclaimed he owned a two-acre tract of the property through adverse possession.
On 13 June 2005, the matter was heard before the trial court. The evidence tended to show defendant's grandparents, Ed and Lourinda Jones ("Ed and Lourinda"), owned the property prior to 1914. Ed and Lourinda orally promised to give each of their ten children five acres of the fifty-acre tract. Cecil and Alease Jones ("Cecil and Alease"), defendant's father and mother and Ed and Lourinda's son and daughter-in-law, lived on a portion of the property. Cecil built a small home on a two-to-five acre tract in 1940.
In January 1954, Ed and Lourinda deeded the property by general warranty deed to Cecil's brother and defendant's uncle, Paschall B. Jones ("Paschall"). The deed to Paschall reserved a life estate for Ed and Lourinda. In January 1958, Ed and Lourinda deeded their life interest to Paschall by warranty deed. Each conveyance was properly recorded. There was no evidence of whether or not Cecil and Alease had Paschall's permission to live on the property after Paschall acquired title.
On 3 June 1965, Paschall and his wife transferred their entire interest in the property to Carl and Eleanor Pegg ("the Peggs") by a duly recorded warranty deed. On 23 September 1965, the Peggs executed a deed to Cecil and Alease. The deed was recorded on 28 September 1965 and purported to convey a life estate in a two-acre tract of the property to "Cecil Jones and wife."
At some point thereafter in 1965, Carl Pegg ("Carr) came over to Cecil and Alease's home to discuss this arrangement. Cecil retrieved a loaded shotgun, pointed it at Carl, and ordered him to leave the property. Carl left behind a recorded copy of the deed purportedly granting Cecil and Alease a life estate in the two-acre tract the Peggs had surveyed out of the fifty-acre tract.
Thereafter, Cecil and Alease continuously lived upon, paid taxes, and raised their children on the property until their deaths in 1993 and 1994 respectfully. In 1986, Cecil and Alease added a mobile home to the property to replace the residence they had built in 1940.
Since Alease's death in 1994, defendant has continuously occupied the two acres described in the survey and the life estate deed from the Peggs. The trial court found as a fact that defendant has held the two-acre tract adversely to plaintiff since 1994. Defendant's family paid taxes on the property from 1994 through 2000, and defendant paid the taxes on the two-acre tract in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Sometime after 19 March 2001, plaintiff learned of the deaths of Cecil and Alease and also began paying taxes on the property. Plaintiff filed this action on 11 May 2004.
On 21 June 2005, the trial court entered an order, which contained a conclusion of law stating "[t]he [d]efendant, Ervin Jones, has occupied the property without the consent or permission of the [p]laintiff since that time, but has not satisfied the statutory time period sufficient to acquire title by virtue of adverse possession[]" and decreed (1) plaintiff "has and is hereby recognized to have, fee simple title to the two acre tract in question in this litigation[]" and (2) defendant "and any and all other parties unnamed and unknown who may occupy the property are hereby ordered to vacate the property forth-with." Defendant appealed to this Court.
In an unpublished opinion entered 1 August 2006, this Court vacated the trial court's order and remanded the matter for further findings of fact. Pegg v. Doe, 178 N.C. App. 742, 632 S.E.2d 600. This Court mandated that the trial court make specific findings of fact on:
(1) whether Cecil and Alease began adversely possessing the tract at issue on or before the date upon which the Peggs received title to the tract at issue, and (2) whether Cecil and Alease rejected the Peggs' attempt to convey a life estate by forcing Carl Pegg to leave the property.
Id. (slip op. 6-7). Upon remand, the trial court concluded that plaintiff was the fee simple owner of the property.
Defendant, in essence, presents one issue for this Court's review: Whether the trial court erred in determining that defendant had not established fee simple ownership in a two-acre tract of land by adverse possession.
"The standard of review on appeal from a judgment entered after a non-jury trial is `whether there is competent evidence to support the trial court's findings of fact and whether the findings support the conclusions of law and ensuing judgment.'" Cartin v. Harrison, 151 N.C. App. 697, 699, 567 S.E.2d 174, 176 (2002) (quoting Sessler v. Marsh, 144 N.C. App. 623, 628, 551 S.E.2d 160, 163, disc. review denied, 354 N.C. 365, 556 S.E.2d 577 (2001)). "The trial court's findings of fact are binding on appeal as long as competent evidence supports them, despite the existence of evidence to the contrary." Resort Realty of the Outer Banks, Inc. v. Brandt, 163 N.C. App. 114, 116, 593 S.E.2d 404, 408 (2004). Simply stated, where the trial court's findings of fact are supported by competent evidence, and the findings of fact, in turn, support the trial court's conclusions of law, the decision of the trial court will be affirmed. This Court will not reweigh the evidence.
I.
Defendant argues that the trial court erred in concluding that he was not the fee simple holder of a two-acre tract of land in Orange County, North Carolina, by way of adverse possession. We disagree.
Generally,
no action to recover possession of real property may be maintained when the party in possession, the defendant[] in the action, or those under whom the defendant claims has been in possession of the property under known and visible lines and boundaries adverse to all other parties for 20 years.
Kennedy v. Whaley, 55 N.C. App. 321, 326, 285 S.E.2d 621, 624 (1982) (emphasis added); see also N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-40 (2005). If the property had been possessed under color of title, however, the statutory time limit is only seven (7) years. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-38 (2005). Here, defendant makes no argument that he took the property under color of title, so the provisions of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-40 are applicable.
In the instant case, the trial court stated in its judgment that there was no evidence presented as to one of the two questions on which this Court remanded for findings of fact. The trial court did not specifically state on which of those two questions it lacked evidence to make findings of fact. Our review of the judgment, however, makes it clear that the trial court was referring to the first question. Due to this lack of finding, the dissent would vacate a judgment and remand for further proceedings to make findings of fact on an issue for which no evidence had been presented. Because a finding of fact on that issue is not necessary to the outcome of this case, we disagree with the dissent's reasoning and affirm the ruling of the trial court.
Specifically, the trial court ruled that "one of the two questions which the Court of Appeals stated did not have sufficient findings of fact and mandated the [c]ourt to find facts with said issue even though there was no evidence presented during trial which related to that issue the [c]ourt therefore FINDS THE FOLLOWING FACTS from the evidence or from the absence of evidence as the case may be[.]"
The trial court made a specific finding of fact as to the second question: "This [c]ourt does not infer that the act of pointing a gun and telling Carl Pegg to get out means that Cecil Jones considered that he owned any property in fee simple or that that message was communicated to Dr. Pegg."
As to the first question, the date on which the Peggs took title to the property was 3 June 1965. The dissent is correct that the trial court made no specific finding as to whether Cecil and Alease began adversely possessing the tract on or before that date. However, the trial court made a finding of fact that defendant presented no evidence that he or his predecessors ever adversely possessed the property before 3 June 1965. Specifically, the trial court stated: "There is no evidence that Cecil Jones ever occupied the property hostilely or adversely to the interest of his parents or adversely to Paschell Jones after he had been deeded the property." Although the finding does not specify the 3 June 1965 date, Paschell Jones and Cecil's parents were the owners of the property up until 3 June 1965, so if the property was never held adversely against Jones or Cecil's parents it necessarily means that it was not held adversely before 3 June 1965.
Additionally, the trial court made a finding of fact that there was no adverse possession after the incident in which Cecil pointed a loaded shotgun at Carl Pegg in 1965. Specifically, the trial court stated that it did "not infer that the act of pointing a gun and telling Carl Pegg to get out means that Cecil Jones considered that he owned any property in fee simple or that that message was communicated to Dr. Pegg." Therefore, under the facts found by the trial court, the longest defendant and his predecessors could have held the property adversely would have been from 3 June 1965 up until the gun incident occurring later in 1965. Thus, at most, defendant's predecessors could have held the property adversely for less than one year. Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-40, the statutory time period for adverse possession is twenty (20) years.
Accordingly, even if we assume that Cecil and Alease were holding the property adversely on 3 June 1965, and that the altercation with the shotgun occurred on 31 December 1965, the trial court's finding of fact that there was no adverse possession from the shotgun incident until 1994 necessarily defeats defendant's claim of adverse possession.
The finding that defendant and/or his predecessors did not meet the hostility requirement for adverse possession after the 1965 shotgun incident until 1994 is also supported by competent evidence. Sometime after the incident, defendant's mother, Alease, expressed an interest in having others look at the deed left by Carl Pegg. Yet there is no evidence that defendant's parents thereafter communicated with the Peggs to disclaim the life tenancy or otherwise gave notice that they were rejecting the Peggs' permission to possess the two-acre tract. The deed granting defendant's parents a life estate in the property was also recorded in Book 203 at Page 788 of the Orange County Registry on or about 28 September 1965. Additionally, plaintiff submitted an affidavit to the trial court that stated that defendant himself had never asserted to her that he owned the property or was holding it adversely at any point. Moreover, Cecil and Alease acknowledged their limited life interest in the real estate in January 1986 and December 1992 on two separate deeds of trust and on a deed of easement in November 1992. All three documents were notarized.
The dissent attempts to use these documents to support a conclusion that Cecil and Alease were "actually, continuously, and exclusively" occupying the land in question. The document executed in January 1986, however, states that Cecil and Alease have "[a] life estate for the lives of the parties[.]" The December 1992 document states that their interest "consists] of a life interest[.]" Finally, the November 1992 document recognizes that Cecil and Alease "are the owners of a life estate" in the property. Accordingly, this evidence fails to aid defendant's efforts to establish adverse possession.
While the incident with the shotgun is some evidence as to hostility, the evidence discussed above is competent to support the trial court's finding of fact that defendant's parents were not holding the property adversely against plaintiff in 1965. Finally, the payment of taxes by defendant and his family does not provide any evidence as to hostility in this case because "life tenant[s] ha[ve] the obligation to list and pay taxes on the property." Thompson v. Watkins, 285 N.C. 616, 620, 207 S.E.2d 740, 743 (1974) (citing N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 105-302(c)(8); 105-384). Accordingly, that finding of fact is binding on appeal. Brandt, 163 N.C. App. at 116, 593 S.E.2d at 408.
After a determination that the findings of fact are binding on this Court, we look only to determine whether those findings support the trial court's conclusions of law. Id. In this case, the trial court made a conclusion of law that defendant did not adversely possess the property in question. In order to obtain property by adverse possession, the party making such a claim must be "adverse [] to all other persons[.]" N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-40. Thus, the trial court's conclusive finding of fact that neither defendant nor his predecessors were adverse from before 1965 until 1994 defeats any claim of adverse possession regardless of whether the property was held adversely from 3 June 1965 until 31 December 1965.
II.
Because we have already held that the trial court did not err in concluding that defendant nor his predecessors in interest held the property adversely for the requisite twenty (20) years, we need not determine whether the trial court erred in determining that neither defendant nor his predecessors in interest held the property under known and visible lines and boundaries.
III.
In summary, we hold that the trial court did not err in awarding plaintiff fee simple title of the property in question. The trial court's order is affirmed.
Affirmed.
Judge McGEE concurs.
Judge TYSON dissents in a separate opinion.