system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why Do We Have Squatter's Rights?

What is the argument for them? I've never heard them mentioned in a positive tone.

Also, what exactly does the term "Squatter's Rights" entail?


Edit: There were a lot of really interesting and helpful explanation, arguments, etc.  This has been interesting and enlightening, thank you!
gpt
Everyone's explaining adverse possession but, honestly, *that almost never happens* outside of small chunks at the edge of adjacent properties and, let's be honest, you're not going to call your neighbor a "squatter" because a fence got built a foot on the wrong side of a property line.

What most people mean when they talk about "squatters rights" negatively is the difficulty in kicking out squatters (trespassers) from abandonned property you own.  We're not talking about them being there for years and having a legal claim to ownership, just them there a month or two & resisting eviction.  Ultimately, this is an extension of *tenants rights*.

Now, if you're renting a place & the owner wants you out, they need to go to court and **evict** you by proving you've somehow violated our lease & need to GTFO.  Because there's a large disparity in power between the involved parties, legally, the tenant gets to stay until the issue is resolved.

People who break into abandoned properties, can use this principle to their advantage.  If the cops show up to kick them out for trespassing, all they need to do is provide a minimal amount of evidence that they *might* be legal tenants, and they can stay on the property until a full legal eviction proceeding has taken place.

We're not talking about people who've spent *years* on an abandoned property and own it, we're talking people who have been there weeks/months using legal loopholes to avoid getting trespassed.  It's not really a legally defined right, just a side-effect of protecting legal tenants.