§ 16.025.Adverse Possession: Five-Year Limitations Period

The second rung, and the one with the most conditions attached.

Five years, where the possessor: (1) cultivates, uses, or enjoys the property; (2) pays applicable taxes on it; and (3) claims the property under a duly registered deed.

All three are required, and the tax element is the one that fails. "Pays applicable taxes" has been read strictly — taxes must be paid before delinquency, for each year of the period. A single missed or late year restarts the count.

That is a demanding requirement, and it is also the section’s justification: someone who has openly used land and paid its taxes for five years under a recorded deed has behaved exactly like an owner, in public, on the tax rolls, where the true owner could have seen it.

Subsection (b) excludes three kinds of deed, and each exclusion targets a different abuse: a quitclaim deed, a forged deed, and a deed executed under a forged power of attorney.

The quitclaim exclusion is the one that catches honest claimants. A quitclaim conveys whatever the grantor had, which may be nothing, and purports to convey no particular title — so it cannot support the good-faith claim of ownership the section is built around. It is a perfectly valid instrument for other purposes and useless for this one.

The forgery exclusions need no explanation: a forged instrument should not become a route to title through the passage of time.

"Duly registered" means recorded in the county records. That is what puts the world on notice and starts the five years against an owner who could have looked.