Squatters' Rights in New Brunswick: The 15-Year Rule and the Land Titles Act Bar

New Brunswick has moved further from traditional adverse possession than any other Atlantic province: its private-land limitation period was cut from 20 years to 15 years in 2011, and once a parcel's title is registered under the Land Titles Act, no new adverse possession claim can start on it at all.

Information last verified on 2026-08-15. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

New Brunswick Is Not "The Same As Its Neighbours"

Popular assumptions about Atlantic Canada often treat the four eastern provinces as running roughly the same traditional adverse possession law, typically a 20-year period. That assumption does not hold for New Brunswick. New Brunswick has gone further than Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, or Newfoundland and Labrador toward closing off adverse possession altogether, and where a period still applies, it is shorter than the traditional 20 years, not the same.

Two separate legal mechanisms converge on that result, and understanding New Brunswick's current law means understanding both of them together, not just one.

Mechanism One: The Land Titles Act's Flat Bar on Registered Land

New Brunswick's Land Titles Act is designed by default to apply to every parcel of land in the province, including land owned by the Crown. Once a parcel's title has actually been registered under the Act, section 17(1)(a) shuts the door completely: no right, title, or interest adverse to the registered owner, and no right acquired by simple possession of another person, can be acquired against that parcel going forward. A companion clause, section 17(1)(b), bars acquiring an easement or right by prescription the same way.

This bar is not a province-wide, day-one abolition. It is triggered parcel by parcel, as each parcel's title comes under the Land Titles Act. In practice, conversion of a specific parcel is usually triggered by a transaction, most commonly a sale or a mortgage, rather than happening automatically to every property at once. That means the practical answer for any specific New Brunswick property depends on whether that parcel has actually been converted yet, not on a single province-wide date.

An adverse possession or prescription right that had already been acquired before a parcel's title was registered is not wiped out by registration. But if that pre-existing right does not appear in the title register, it becomes unenforceable against the registered owner, subject to a rectification procedure a rights-holder can apply for under sections 17(2) and (3) if the right was left off the register by error.

Mechanism Two: A Shorter 15-Year Period on Land Not Yet Registered

For land that has not yet been registered under the Land Titles Act, New Brunswick's general limitation statute still runs an adverse possession clock, but it is shorter than it used to be. The Limitation of Actions Act, through a section inserted in 2011, bars a claim to recover possession of land once the defendant and any predecessors have dispossessed the claimant for a continuous period of 15 years, or 60 years if the claimant is the Crown.

That 15-year figure replaced a 20-year rule that had applied in New Brunswick since 1973, under a statute that was itself renamed the Real Property Limitations Act in 2009 before being repealed outright in 2011 when the shorter period took effect. The Crown figure did not change: 60 years applied before 2011 and applies now. Only the private-land period moved, and it moved down, from 20 years to 15, the opposite direction from what someone assuming Atlantic provinces "extend" possession periods over time might expect.

Where dispossession begins during a life interest, a future interest, or a fixed-term lease, the claim survives until whichever is later: the ordinary 15-year period, or 5 years after that present interest or lease term ends. For a tenancy specifically, the dispossession clock is deemed to begin only once the tenant stops paying rent, not simply by the tenant remaining past the end of the lease term, and a co-tenant who takes more than their own undivided share dispossesses the other co-tenants from that point.

As with Nova Scotia's equivalent provision, the mechanism here is extinguishment of the true owner's right, not an automatic grant of ownership to the possessor.

So Which Answer Applies to a Given Property?

The honest answer is that it depends on the parcel, and a New Brunswick reader should not treat either headline, "15 years" or "abolished," as automatically correct for their own property. Conversion to the Land Titles system is not automatic or complete across the province. Per New Brunswick's own land registry guidance, a lawyer must conduct a fresh search of the title in the Registry of Deeds to convert a parcel, and conversion is required when mortgaging or buying land but is not otherwise forced.

That means unconverted parcels genuinely still exist in New Brunswick today. For those, the 15-year private and 60-year Crown limitation period under the Limitation of Actions Act is real, current law, not a dead letter; the legislature would not have enacted a live 15-year rule in 2011 for land it expected to disappear immediately. For any parcel that has already been registered under the Land Titles Act, section 17(1)(a) has already closed the door, and the 15-year rule is no longer relevant to that specific property.

What Replaced the Quieting of Titles Act

New Brunswick's old Quieting of Titles Act no longer exists as a standalone statute. It was repealed effective November 1, 2014. In its place, Rules of Court Rule 70, Title Certifications, now performs the same underlying function through an ordinary court action or application rather than a separate Act.

The replacement mechanism offers two order types that map onto the old Act's outcomes: a full title declaration, equivalent to the old certificate of title, and a limited title declaration, equivalent to a lesser declaration the old Act also allowed. One procedural change is worth noting for anyone actually pursuing a claim: under the new Rule, public notice of the claim is given before the proceeding is commenced, rather than after, as under the old Act, letting a prospective applicant see objections and decide how to proceed before filing rather than after. The Rule is written to cross-reference both the Land Titles Act and the Registry Act, so a resulting title declaration can be integrated into whichever of the two land-registration systems the parcel sits in.

Crown Land

The applicable period against Crown land is 60 years, the same figure carried over unchanged from the pre-2011 law, and it applies subject to the same Land Titles Act bar once a specific Crown parcel is registered under that Act (the Act's default scope explicitly includes land owned by the Crown). No New Brunswick-specific Crown-land adverse possession application process or policy program, comparable to what exists in a neighbouring province, was found. A claimant should not assume such a program exists in New Brunswick and should confirm directly with the relevant provincial department before assuming a Crown-land claim can proceed through any particular administrative channel.

Tenant or Squatter? Where the Line Falls

New Brunswick has no separate statute distinguishing a permitted occupant from a trespasser for adverse possession purposes. Instead, the Limitation of Actions Act supplies the operative test for a tenancy specifically: a period of dispossession of a landlord by a tenant is deemed to begin only when the tenant stops paying rent, not merely by continuing to occupy the property. Once that clock starts, it runs on the same 15-year basis described above, and remains subject to the Land Titles Act bar if the parcel in question has already been registered.

Someone dealing with an occupant who still has tenancy status, rather than a true trespasser, should not treat this article's adverse-possession framework as the relevant process. New Brunswick is not currently one of the seven provinces with a dedicated tenant-rights page on this site; readers with a tenancy question should contact New Brunswick's residential tenancy authority directly rather than rely on a general Canada-wide notice-period table, since New Brunswick's specific notice periods have not been verified for that purpose. See eviction notices in Canada for the general process elsewhere, with that caveat in mind.

Removing a Squatter: Trespass Law and Its Limits

A person occupying land with no tenancy and no permission is a trespasser, addressed through New Brunswick's Trespass Act rather than a residential tenancy process. The Act ties its offences to a category schedule referenced in the Provincial Offences Procedure Act rather than stating a dollar fine directly in the Trespass Act itself, so a reader needing the exact current fine should check that schedule rather than assume a figure from another province applies. A convicting court can also order restitution to the aggrieved party, capped at the prevailing small-claims limit.

The Act gives an owner or occupier limited citizen's-arrest and identify-yourself powers against a suspected trespasser, and gives police a 48-hour vehicle-detention power tied specifically to a trespass offence committed by vehicle, with seizure and forfeiture possible on a second or later conviction on the same land. As in every other province, these penal and civil remedies do not license an owner to forcibly retake possession in a way that breaches the peace; forcible entry and forcible detainer remain federal Criminal Code offences regardless of who legally owns the property. For the removal process itself, see squatters' rights in Canada.

Related Resources

For the ownership-side doctrine shared across provinces, including how the Land Titles versus Registry split plays out elsewhere and Quebec's separate acquisitive-prescription regime, see adverse possession and squatters in Canada. For boundary and fence-line disputes specifically, see property lines and fences in Canada and trespass laws in Canada. Nova Scotia next door has kept a more traditional structure, with a 20-year private and 40-year Crown period on land not yet migrated into its own registration system; see squatters' rights in Nova Scotia for the contrast. For court procedure tied to a New Brunswick title-certification proceeding, see court records in New Brunswick.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only and is not legal advice. New Brunswick's rules are genuinely parcel-specific: whether the 15-year period, the 60-year Crown period, or the Land Titles Act's complete bar applies to a given property depends on that property's individual registration status, which this article cannot determine. Several items remain unresolved by any primary source found during research and should be confirmed with a lawyer or the relevant provincial office before relying on them: whether any transitional provision preserved a claim that was already accruing under the old 20-year rule when it was repealed in 2011, the current Rules of Court rule number and text for Title Certifications beyond the 2014 description of the change, whether a New Brunswick-specific Crown-land adverse possession application process exists at all, and the current Trespass Act fine amounts under the Provincial Offences Procedure Act category schedule. Both adverse possession claims and squatter removals warrant advice from a licensed lawyer, and anyone who believes they may be mid-claim under the pre-2011 rule should get that specific timing question reviewed rather than assume either the old or new period applies.