§ 16.022.Effect of Disability

The adverse possession subchapter has its own disability rule, and it is drawn differently from the one in Subchapter A.

Three disabilities, not two. A person is under a legal disability if they are under 18 (married or not), of unsound mind, or serving in the United States Armed Forces during time of war. That third category has no counterpart in the general provision.

The moment of measurement is also different, and more generous. The disability must exist at the time title to the property vests or adverse possession commences — which gives an owner two possible moments rather than the single accrual date used in Subchapter A.

If it does, the time of the disability is not included in the limitations period.

Subsection (c) says what happens afterwards: once the disability ends, the person has the same time to present a claim that is allowed to others under the chapter. So a minor who turns 18 against a ten-year possessor gets the full ten years from that point, not the remainder of a period already partly run.

The exception is what makes the section workable. Subsection (c) opens "except as provided by" the two 25-year provisions, and those say expressly that they run regardless of whether the person is or has been under a legal disability.

Without that carve-out, land held for a century could remain vulnerable because some remote heir was a minor at the wrong moment. The 25-year periods are the outer wall: after that long, title settles whatever anyone’s condition.

Note that this section governs this subchapter only. Personal claims run under the general disability provision instead, and the tacking rule against stacking disabilities appears there rather than here.