Quiet Title Actions in Rhode Island: Recent Supreme Court Decisions Every Property Owner Should Know 

By Andrew R. Bilodeau, Esq. · Nov 3, 2026

What Is a Quiet Title Action? 

Quiet title actions in Rhode Island address one of a property owner’s most unsettling problems: discovering that someone else claims an interest in the land. The claim may arise from a neighbor who has treated part of your yard as their own for years, an old mortgage or lien that was never properly discharged, a defective deed in your chain of title, or a boundary line that two families have understood differently for decades. Under R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-16-4, a qualifying claimant may seek a judicial determination of competing property interests and removal of a cloud on title. Our Rhode Island quiet title attorneys represent clients asserting ownership rights and defending against adverse claims.

A quiet title action is a lawsuit filed in the Rhode Island Superior Court asking a judge to determine the validity of competing claims to real estate, remove any cloud on the title, and enter a judgment confirming ownership. When final, that judgment is conclusive against all persons made party to the action. R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-16-14. In other words, the court “quiets” the title, silencing adverse claims so the owner can sell, refinance, insure, or simply enjoy the property without a dispute hanging over it. 

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has been unusually active in this area over the past several years, issuing a series of decisions between 2023 and 2026 that reshape how quiet title and adverse possession claims are litigated. Our firm has been in the middle of that development, having successfully argued one of the leading recent appeals. This article summarizes the current legal landscape and what it means for Rhode Island property owners on both sides of a title dispute. 

The Statutory Framework: Chapter 34-16 and the Ten Year Rule 

Rhode Island’s quiet title framework is governed primarily by the Quieting Title chapter, R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 34-16-1 through 34-16-14, together with the adverse possession statute, R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-7-1. The Superior Court holds exclusive original jurisdiction over quiet title actions as proceedings of an equitable character under R.I. Gen. Laws § 8-2-13. The District Court cannot resolve questions of title, and a District Court judgment of possession has no preclusive effect on a later Superior Court quiet title action. 

Section 34-16-4 authorizes any person claiming title to real estate, whether by deed, grant, conveyance, devise, or inheritance, to sue all persons claiming or appearing to have any adverse interest of record. Importantly, the action may be brought whether the plaintiff is in or out of possession of the property. A companion provision, § 34-16-1, permits quiet title actions where title rests on a tax collector’s deed, a sheriff’s execution sale, or a judicial proceeding, even where the plaintiff’s title is undisputed, provided any statutory redemption period has expired before filing. 

The statute imposes real procedural teeth, and Rhode Island courts have dismissed cases for noncompliance. Under § 34-16-5, the complaint must include a complete description of the real estate, the character and source of the plaintiff’s claimed interest, the character of the adverse claims, the names and last known addresses of the adverse claimants, and the duration of the plaintiff’s ownership and possession. Under § 34-16-2, the plaintiff must, at its own cost and with the court’s approval, retain a title company or an attorney experienced in examining land titles to examine the title and deposit an abstract, a report on the status of the title, and a list of interested parties with the court. All indispensable parties, including any foreclosing lender holding record title, must be joined, and the failure to join all interested owners can result in dismissal. 

Running alongside the quiet title chapter is the adverse possession statute. Section 34-7-1 provides that ten years of uninterrupted, quiet, peaceful, and actual seisin and possession of land, claimed as one’s own proper, sole, and rightful estate in fee simple, gives good and rightful title. Our Supreme Court has long interpreted the statute to require proof that the claimant’s use was actual, open, notorious, hostile, continuous, and exclusive, under a claim of right, for at least ten years. Every element must be proven by clear and convincing evidence, a demanding standard the Court calls strict proof. Once the ten years run, title vests in the adverse possessor immediately and by operation of law. 

Adverse Possession and the Foisy Decision: Our Firm Before the Supreme Court 

Most contested quiet title actions in Rhode Island rise or fall on adverse possession, and one of the leading modern decisions is a case our firm argued and won on appeal: Union Cemetery Burial Society of North Smithfield v. Foisy, 292 A.3d 1205 (R.I. 2023). 

In Foisy, the Supreme Court held that the claimants had established by clear and convincing evidence that their use and possession of the disputed area was open and notorious, reiterating that ordinary landscaping and yard maintenance may be enough to put a record owner on notice of an adverse claim. The Court also confirmed a principle with enormous practical consequences: upon ten years of uninterrupted, quiet, peaceful, and actual seisin and possession, good and rightful title vests immediately in the adverse claimant. The Court vacated the judgment below and remanded for further proceedings on the hostile and exclusive elements. Foisy is now regularly cited in Rhode Island adverse possession litigation, and the experience of briefing and arguing it informs how we evaluate and try these cases for our clients. 

The lesson of Foisy and the cases that follow it is that adverse possession claims are won and lost on the details: what was done on the land, when it started, how visible it was, and whether anyone asked for or gave permission. Photographs, surveys, tax records, and credible witnesses matter far more than assumptions about where a fence line “has always been.” 

What the Supreme Court Has Decided Since: 2024 Through 2026 

Asking to buy the land can sink your claim. In Blechman v. Woodward, 352 A.3d 157 (R.I. 2026), the plaintiffs had maintained and used a disputed boundary area for more than ten years, yet the Supreme Court affirmed the denial of their adverse possession claim. The plaintiffs had twice inquired about purchasing the neighboring property, asked the owner’s permission to retrieve rocks, and sought the owner’s acquiescence before planting trees. The Court held that such objective acknowledgments of the record owner’s superior title, even when made after the ten year period, remain highly relevant to whether the possession was ever truly hostile. The Court declined to immunize post vesting conduct from consideration. Blechman also reaffirmed the related doctrine of acquiescence, under which adjoining owners who recognize an observable boundary marker for ten years are bound by it, though the plaintiffs there could not prove a marker existed for the full period. 

Permission ends when the neighbor’s land is sold. In Desrochers v. Micheli, 357 A.3d 1048 (R.I. 2026), the Court clarified what happens when a claimant’s use began with the neighbor’s permission and the neighboring parcel is later sold. Permission is a personal privilege of the landowner and does not run with the land. When the burdened parcel is conveyed to a new owner who has no knowledge of the old permission, the permission terminates, and the claimant’s continued open use can become adverse from that point forward. The rule is different when the claimant’s own parcel is the one sold, in which case prior permission does not automatically end. For anyone who has tolerated a neighbor’s use of their land as a courtesy, Desrochers is a warning that a sale of the property can quietly start the ten year clock. 

Ordinary yard work, done consistently, can take title. In New Phase Realty, LLC v. Fournier, 337 A.3d 695 (R.I. 2025), the claimants had cleared debris, removed trees, mowed, planted a garden, installed a fence, and used a disputed triangle for their children and dog continuously for ten years. The Court affirmed summary judgment in their favor, holding that these activities established every element by clear and convincing evidence. The Court also resolved a novel question, holding that the federal government’s execution of a search warrant on the adjacent property was not a seizure under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 and did not interrupt the ten year period. 

Credibility decides close cases. In Sepulveda v. Buffum, 334 A.3d 98 (R.I. 2025), the only evidence of exclusive use was the testimony of the claimant and his longtime landscaper. The trial justice found both witnesses not credible, and the Supreme Court affirmed, reiterating that a trial justice may reject even uncontroverted testimony that contains inherent improbabilities or lacks credibility, and that those credibility findings receive great deference on appeal. 

Co-owners face a heightened burden. In O’Keefe v. York, 308 A.3d 983 (R.I. 2024), neighbors who each held an undivided one sixth interest in a shared cul-de-sac failed in their attempt to adversely possess it against their cotenants. A claimant proceeding against a cotenant must show acts of possession that are not merely inconsistent with the other owners’ rights but in exclusion of them. Because the other cotenants kept using the area, the claim failed. 

Tacking and the duty question. In Clark v. Buttonwoods Beach Ass’n, 226 A.3d 683 (R.I. 2020), the Court confirmed that an adverse possessor has no duty to file suit or to assert the claim at every opportunity, and that successive owners’ periods of possession may be tacked together to reach ten years, although the claimants there could not prove continuous adverse use across four predecessors. And on standing, Twenty Eleven, LLC v. Botelho, 127 A.3d 897 (R.I. 2015), holds that a purchaser at a condominium association’s lien foreclosure sale has standing to quiet title in its own name, and that foreclosure of the association’s super priority lien extinguishes a prior recorded first mortgage when the lender fails to redeem within thirty days. 

Protecting Your Title: Practical Takeaways 

For Record Owners Facing an Encroachment or Adverse Claim

A property owner who discovers that a neighbor is using or occupying part of the property should obtain legal advice promptly. The first questions are whether the use is permissive, whether another person is asserting an ownership interest, and whether the evidence supports the required period and character of adverse possession.

Depending on the circumstances, appropriate measures may include a quiet title action, a request for injunctive relief, a statutory notice disputing the use, or another lawful means of protecting possession. The proper response depends on the property history, the parties’ existing rights, and whether the requirements for adverse possession may already have been satisfied.

Under R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-7-6, a legal owner may give written notice of an intention to dispute rights arising from another person’s claim or use. The statute requires both service and recording. It provides for service by a disinterested person making a return under oath, and the notice with that return must be recorded in the appropriate municipal land evidence records within three months after service. Merely recording a document should not be treated as satisfaction of all statutory requirements.

Timing matters. An owner should not assume that a notice or lawsuit will defeat an ownership claim that already matured before the owner acted. Nor should an owner assume that the recorded deed alone authorizes removing a fence, demolishing an improvement, or physically excluding someone from an area whose ownership is disputed. The available remedies should be evaluated before taking action.

For Property Owners Asserting Adverse Possession

A claimant must be prepared to establish every required element by clear and convincing evidence. Organize the history of possession, identify the precise area claimed, and preserve surveys, dated photographs, maintenance records, correspondence, and information identifying witnesses with personal knowledge of the property’s use.

Obtain legal advice before requesting permission, discussing a purchase of the disputed property, signing a license, or making statements acknowledging another person’s superior title. Such communications may affect the analysis of hostility and claim of right. Their significance depends on their timing, context, and purpose, including whether they concern settlement of an existing dispute. The appropriate lesson is to understand the legal consequences before communicating—not to assume that every negotiation automatically defeats a claim.

Where use began with permission, identify which parcel was later transferred and whether the subsequent owner knew of the prior permission. A sale does not, by itself, establish that every requirement for adverse possession has been met. The history and character of the use still require examination.

When the disputed property is jointly owned, ordinary maintenance or use may be consistent with the rights of the other cotenants. A claimant must address the heightened requirements applicable to an adverse claim against a co-owner rather than assume that maintaining the property alone establishes exclusive ownership.

Before Filing a Quiet Title Action

A quiet title complaint requires careful attention to the property description, the source of the claimed interest, competing claims, and the identity of affected parties. R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-16-5 specifies the information the complaint must contain to the extent known to the plaintiff.

The statutory title-examination process and the identification and notification of necessary parties also require attention. A strong factual claim does not eliminate the need to follow the applicable procedures.

Owners and claimants should evaluate the documentary record, the history of possession, and the available legal remedies before taking steps that could affect their rights. Contact Bilodeau Capalbo, LLC to discuss a Rhode Island title, boundary, or adverse possession dispute.

How Bilodeau Capalbo Can Help 

Quiet title and adverse possession cases are fact intensive, procedurally demanding, and increasingly shaped by a fast moving body of Supreme Court precedent. Bilodeau Capalbo, LLC litigates these disputes throughout Rhode Island, from boundary and encroachment disputes between neighbors to title defects uncovered at closing, unreleased mortgages and liens, tax title issues, and foreclosure related title claims. Our experience includes successfully arguing the Foisy adverse possession appeal before the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and we bring that appellate perspective to every title matter we handle, whether the goal is clearing title to complete a sale or defending land your family has used for generations. 

If you are facing a title dispute or have questions about a boundary, encroachment, or cloud on your title, contact Bilodeau Capalbo, LLC at (401) 300-4055 to schedule a consultation. 

This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney client relationship. Every title dispute turns on its own facts, and you should consult an attorney about your specific situation.