disseisin

In property law, disseisin refers to the act of wrongfully taking possession of land from someone who has a superior ownership interest. This concept is rooted in the English common law idea of "seisin," which meant possessing land with a complete right to it. When someone was disseised, they could pursue legal action, such as the "assize of novel disseisin," to reclaim their property.1

A related term, redisseisin, describes a second disseisin committed by the same person who had previously been judged to have wrongfully taken the same estate. Similarly, postdisseisin refers to a second disseisin by the same disseisor after the land had been recovered through a legal action. In the United States, disseisin evolved into the concept of adverse possession, where statutes of limitation allow an adverse possessor to acquire legal title to land after a certain period.231