alt Hacker NewsWhile not a letter of the law argument, there's a spirit of the law argument here that comes from the ideas like adverse posession and the statute of limitations. The OP didn't use or even worry about the options/shares for 30 some years: the time to speak up and assert ownership was literal decades ago.
If someone has built a house on a remote lot you claim to own, while making property improvements and paying taxes, but you've never visited for 30 years; are you really entitled to swoop in and seize their house now?
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In civil law countries, you would be. That's why Europe has the reputation for being tangled in bureaucracy. Every possible risk has to be discharged before you can do anything at all.
One man's negligence is another man's HODL... Buying and holding an asset is a completely sound investment strategy.
> ; are you really entitled to swoop in and seize their house now?
In the country i am, yes. If you have the paperwork.
Physical land is quite different. And if squatting is legal, it makes a kind of tax of ownership and also means that any registry is invalid.
If you are saying the physical house only and not the land that is different yes. Someone who can move the house obviously should still own the house. Trespassing usually doesn't invalidate ownership of all your belongings.
More important is the meta concept of like we write confusing contracts and then execute them and we agree on an end date (all transactions done) and then informally and implicitly we agree that if anything was wrong you only have z years after close date to fix it.
This is kind of thing where big people can do it themselves and other people perhaps need a regulated entity to review their docs ... Like mortgages and what not.
The interesting thing here would be if the IRS decides to have an opinion ...
Yes, you are entitled. This has been a big point of contention in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. A lot of the property was nationalized, their former owners defected, and then the heirs came back decades later requesting their property back. In some cases where there was a house, there was now a 15-story building.
Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi
I dont think the land ownership analogy is quite as simple as you're making it out to be, given that the US and many other countries are literally founded on "someone else's land" and the entire Palestine / Israel issue.