Editing Usucaption (section)

====The Roman Law of Usucapio====
However, if a [[bonitary owner]] kept the ''res'' (property) in his [[Possession (law)|possession]] for a certain amount of time (two years for land, one year for [[Personal property|chattel]]s) his [[title]] would become full [[title]] and he could assert himself as ''[[Dominus (title)|dominus]]''.

Usucaption was the solution that emerged to address the defects of Roman [[ownership]]. It required five elements:<ref name="Nicholas p. 122">{{cite book|last=Nicholas|first=Barry|title=An Introduction to Roman Law|year=1962|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=London|isbn=0-19-876063-9|pages=122}}</ref>

# Uninterrupted possession of the property for the requisite period (one year for chattels, two years for land);
# The [[property]] was capable of being owned. Not a free man for example;
# [[Good faith]]. For example, a buyer might purchase a [[slave]] (categorised as [[res mancipi]]) in [[good faith]] but find twelve months on that the [[vendor]] did not himself have good [[title]] to that [[slave]];
# ''[[Iusta causa]]''. A proper ground for acquiring the [[property]], e.g. showing that the acquirer paid for the [[property]].
# The property must not have been stolen any time or taken by force.

This largely ameliorated the problems experienced by [[Conveyancing|conveyance]] as a means of establishing [[ownership]], but could still yield harsh results. A purchaser of res mancipi could be on his way to successfully usucaping the property (e.g. 11 months in possession) but would lose his claim to it if his possession was challenged before the period of usucaption by someone who could establish title.

Usucaption was altered by the [[Actio Publiciana]] (see [[Institutes of Gaius|Gaius]] 4.36<ref name=Gaius /><ref name="Gaius (online)" />) which gave scope in the [[vindicatio]] (the action for property) for a fictitious usucaption. Such a situation would only arise where the claimant's possession of the [[property]] had been interrupted before the period required to usucape it had elapsed. The [[Actio Publiciana]] made provision for the possessor of the [[property]] to be taken to have usucaped it successfully, if he could show that he would have usucaped the [[property]] had his possession of it not been interrupted. In this way usucaption became the dominant form of establishing [[ownership]] in [[Ancient Rome|Rome]].