## Facts

- Alice and Charles Basilides married in 1901.
- Mrs. Basilides had two children from a prior marriage: Alice McKnight and Fred King.
- Mr. and Mrs. Basilides had one child together: Ruth Allison.
- During the marriage, the family acquired two Seattle residences:
  - 5203 First Avenue Northwest (the “Big House”).
  - 326 West Forty-First Street (the “Little House”).
- Mrs. Basilides died intestate in 1929, and her estate was never probated.
- After her death, Mr. Basilides remained in possession of the Big House as his home.
- He rented out the Little House and later sold it on a partial-payment real estate contract in 1938.
- Mr. Basilides maintained both properties, made improvements, and paid taxes and assessments.
- Years after their mother’s death, Alice McKnight and Fred King sued Mr. Basilides for partition and an accounting, claiming interests in the properties as heirs and thus as cotenants with their stepfather and half-sister.
- The trial court found Alice and Fred each owned an undivided one-sixth interest in both properties, ordered an accounting against Mr. Basilides for rents and use, and ordered the Big House sold for partition; Ruth Allison was defaulted.
- Mr. Basilides appealed, arguing he had acquired exclusive title through adverse possession and raising defenses including limitations and laches.

## Issues

1. Whether Mr. Basilides, a cotenant in sole possession who collected rents and paid expenses, acquired exclusive title against the other cotenants by adverse possession.
2. Whether the limitations period for adverse possession between cotenants begins to run without an ouster and notice (or clearly communicated repudiation) of the other cotenants’ rights.
3. Whether the heirs’ delay in bringing suit barred partition and accounting under laches.
4. Whether a cotenant in possession must account to other cotenants for (a) rents actually received from the common property and (b) reasonable rental value for exclusive personal occupancy of part of the property.
5. Whether a cotenant who paid taxes and assessments is entitled to interest on those payments when the property produced income.

## Decision

- The Washington Supreme Court modified the decree and affirmed it as modified.
- The court rejected Mr. Basilides’s adverse-possession claim because his conduct did not amount to an ouster or a clear repudiation of his cotenants’ rights brought home to them by actual notice.
- The court held the limitations period for an adverse-possession claim between cotenants does not begin to run until there has been an ouster and notice of the hostile claim.
- The court held laches did not bar the action: mere delay was not enough, and Mr. Basilides did not show a prejudicial change in conditions attributable to the delay; his failure to probate the estate contributed to the situation.
- The court upheld requiring Mr. Basilides to account to the cotenants for rents received from the common property and for the reasonable rental value of his exclusive occupancy as a home, subject to appropriate credits and the trial court’s accounting adjustments.
- The court denied interest on taxes and assessments where the payments were effectively made out of income from the property (treated as funds in which all cotenants shared).

## Legal Principles

- A cotenant’s exclusive possession and control of common property is presumed consistent with the cotenancy and is not adverse to other cotenants without clear acts showing an intent to hold exclusively.
- To establish adverse possession against cotenants, the possessing cotenant must prove an ouster or unequivocal repudiation of the other cotenants’ rights, and the other cotenants must have actual knowledge (or its equivalent) of that hostile claim.
- For adverse possession between cotenants, the statute of limitations does not run until ouster and notice of the adverse claim occur.
- Laches in equity requires more than passage of time; it requires delay plus a change in conditions or relations that prejudices the party asserting laches.
- A cotenant who receives rents or proceeds from common property must account to other cotenants for their proportional shares.
- A cotenant in exclusive occupancy of common property as a home may be charged with the reasonable rental value of that occupancy in an accounting between cotenants.
- A cotenant paying taxes and assessments may receive credit in the accounting, but interest may be denied when those payments are effectively made from common-property income.

## Conclusion

McKnight v. Basilides held that a widower’s long, exclusive possession and management of community-acquired real property did not ripen into exclusive title against his stepchildren absent an ouster and actual notice of a hostile claim; limitations therefore did not run, laches did not bar suit on delay alone, and the occupying cotenant had to account for rents and the reasonable rental value of his exclusive use, while being denied interest on taxes and assessments paid from property income.


McKnight v. Basilides, 143 P.2d 307 (1943)