The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A FAMILY dispute over a New Providence home has ended with a blunt legal lesson from the Privy Council: even a strong claim can fail if it is brought too late.

According to a recent ruling, the Board allowed an appeal by Denise Barnes, finding that her cousins lost any right to the property because they waited more than 12 years to act.

The case centred on a house in the Boyd Subdivision that once belonged to the family matriarch, Pearl Leona Moxey. Her will left the property to two sons in equal shares. One of them, Charles Moxey Sr, later died, leaving his children — Pearl Moxey and Charles Moxey Jr — with a potential claim to half the home.

But in 2003, the property was sold by the executor to Ms Barnes, the daughter of another sibling. She moved in that same year and remained in possession.

More than a decade later, in 2015, her cousins tried to assert their interest, arguing that the sale was flawed and that they had been misled about their rights.

By then, the clock had already run out.

The Privy Council said the law sets a 12-year limit for bringing claims to recover land. Ms Barnes had been in open and exclusive possession of the property since May 2003. The counterclaim was filed in August 2015 — outside that window.

That left the cousins with one way around the time limit: they had to prove that crucial facts had been deliberately concealed from them, delaying their ability to act.

The Board said they could not meet that test.

There was evidence that another relative had told the family the property had been left to “the sisters,” which was untrue. But the judges drew a careful distinction. It was not enough to show that someone misled them. The law required proof that Ms Barnes herself, or someone acting for her, deliberately concealed facts they needed in order to bring a claim.

There was no such finding.

Just as important, the court said some of the key facts were never hidden at all. Ms Barnes’ occupation of the house was open. The locks had been changed. The other side of the family had been excluded. Those were visible signs that something had changed, and the law expects people to act when they see that.

The Board also pointed out that the will establishing the family’s entitlement had been on record in the Registry of Deeds since 1987, available to anyone who chose to search for it.

Taken together, that meant the cousins could not show they were prevented from discovering their claim.

Ultimately, the Privy Council ruled that the claim was statute-barred and that Ms Barnes had acquired title through adverse possession, a doctrine that allows someone to become the legal owner of land if they occupy it openly, exclusively, and without challenge for a sufficient period.

The judgment did not ignore the troubling aspects of the case. Lower courts had found the property was sold at an undervalued price and that the uncle’s estate was not properly handled. The Privy Council itself expressed “regret” about how the cousins had been treated, but those concerns did not change the outcome.