§ 16.027.Adverse Possession: 25-Year Limitations Period Notwithstanding Disability

The outer wall of the adverse possession scheme.

A person, regardless of whether the person is or has been under a legal disability, must bring suit not later than 25 years after the day the cause of action accrues to recover real property held in peaceable and adverse possession by another who cultivates, uses, or enjoys the property.

The qualifying conduct is identical to the ten-year period. Nothing more is required of the possessor — no deed, no taxes, no colour of title. The only difference is the length of time and what that length buys.

What it buys is finality against disability. The subchapter’s disability provision suspends the shorter periods for a minor, a person of unsound mind, or someone serving in wartime. This section says the 25 years runs anyway.

Without it, a disability arising in a remote heir could keep title unsettled indefinitely, and land held quietly for generations would never become marketable. The Legislature set 25 years as the point at which certainty outweighs the protection.

So the section is not aimed at an owner who slept on their rights for a quarter century. That owner is already barred by the ten-year period. This one reaches the owner who had a good excuse — and says that after 25 years even a good excuse runs out.

Note that the acreage cap in the ten-year provision is not carried across. This section describes the conduct without repeating the 160-acre limit or the enclosure exception, which sit in their own provision.

The companion 25-year provision covers the possessor holding in good faith under a recorded instrument, and gives them something more: good and marketable title, expressly stated.