The occupant admitted in writing that the land is mine — does that wipe out the years he has already counted?

Why recognition destroys the claim

Acquisitive prescription rests on possessing as an owner. Article 1118 requires possession in the concept of an owner, public, peaceful and uninterrupted, and a person who admits the land belongs to somebody else is, by that admission, not holding it as owner. That is why the article treats recognition as an interruption rather than as a piece of evidence: the very character his possession needed has been contradicted out of his own mouth, and any period has to begin afresh from that point.

Tacit recognition counts too

The article is not confined to signed statements. Any express or tacit recognition is enough, and tacit recognition is conduct that only makes sense if the land is yours: asking permission to build, offering to buy it, paying or promising rent, agreeing to leave by a date, asking for more time to stay. Those are often more useful than a formal admission, because they arise naturally in a family arrangement. What makes them work is that they are dated and attributable to him.

Two limits worth keeping in view

The recognition must be the possessor's own, so an admission by a relative who is not the person occupying, or by someone since deceased whose successor now claims in his own right, is a weaker thing than it looks. And it must actually recognise your right rather than merely be polite. A message saying he does not want any trouble is not an acknowledgment that the land is yours. Read the words as an opponent would read them before building anything on them.

Preserve it properly

Keep the original in whatever form it exists, and keep it retrievable. Screenshots of messages should capture the surrounding conversation, the number or account, and the dates intact rather than being cropped to the useful line. A signed and dated acknowledgment is better still, and there is rarely a reason not to ask for one while relations are good. Note too that recognition is not a substitute for acting: it resets the counting, but the occupant is still on your land.

Two limits worth being precise about

First, the recognition has to be of your right as owner. Someone who occupies with your permission — a lessee, a caretaker, a relative allowed to stay — never held adversely to begin with, so his acknowledgment changes nothing about a prescriptive period that was never running in his favour. Article 1125 does its work only where the occupant was holding against you and then conceded. Second, interruption is not a pause. The years he had accumulated are not held in suspense to be picked up later; they are wiped, and if he ever begins possessing adversely again he starts from zero. That is why a written admission is worth obtaining and keeping in its original form: it operates as both proof and reset, and if the point is ever litigated the burden of producing it will be yours.

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 1118 — Possession That Ripens Into Ownership
• Civil Code, Article 1119 — Possession by Mere Tolerance Does Not Count