Colorado Family Returns Home After Months Away, Finds People Living In House

[Street_Cop50]

Here is your worst nightmare: You go temporarily to another town for work, and when you come back, another family has taken over your house.

That happened to the Donovan family of Littleton, Colo. The Donovans have been pursuing legal action for eight months to get their home back.

Back in March 2011, Troy Donovan got a job in Indiana, and his wife, Dayna, and two daughters moved with him. After months of trying to sell their Colorado house, the family gave up, winterized the place and turned off the utilities, expecting their vacant home to be waiting for them when they returned.

But to their surprise, it was not. Neighbors informed them other people had moved in.

"We show up at the house, and we say, ‘Look, I’m Troy Donovan, this is my wife, Dayna, we own this home,’" Donovan told CBS4 in Denver. But the occupants refused to leave.

Veronica Fernandez-Beleta and Jose Rafael Leyva-Caraveo said that the home was theirs and that they had paid Alfonso Carillo $5,000 for a deed of "adverse possession," according to the TV station. It's unclear whether they believed they could really get a house for $5,000 or if they were making additional payments. "I am sad and confused and distressed," Fernandez-Beleta tearfully told CBS4.

According to the TV station, Carillo, a former real-estate agent who was stripped of his license, has been part of at least a dozen schemes throughout the Denver area. Carillo has refused to talk to the TV station and has filed federal lawsuits against law-enforcement agencies accusing them of harassing the Hispanic residents of the homes. Carillo is facing criminal charges.

Adverse possession is a legal mechanism through which someone gains control of another's property by "hostile, open and notorious" use for a period of years – 18 in Colorado, or seven if the occupants pay the taxes. The doctrine is used most commonly in border disputes.

But there have been a number of schemes nationwide in which squatters have claimed they could take over vacant homes through adverse possession, as well as schemes in which people sold or rented homes they didn't own.

The Donovans have been living in a relative's basement and were elated Thursday when a judge ruled in their favor.

"We get to get out of the basement, get a full home to live in," Dayna Donovan told CBS4. "A home we created and worked very hard in, as well."

But as of Sunday, the Donovans were still waiting. Troy Donovan wrote on the CBS4 website:

Yes we had a Judge rule in our favor and gave them 48 hrs to vacate. They aren't budging. They are STILL living there and won't move out!! They were aware that they were being scammed the second we got back to Colorado because we told them. That was 6 weeks ago. Let alone when we found out they were living there in March we sent Littleton PD over to our house and that's when they produced the phony documents and were allowed to stay there. They have had plenty of time to move. They are running this thing to the very very end. We now have to pay Arapahoe County Sheriffs to evict them, but we can't do anything until Monday then we will get a date of when they will go there and physically remove them. So in short, NO WE DID NOT GET OUR HOME BACK IN 48 HRS. This is an outrage!!!


This article actually angers me. You work hard, pay your mortgage, pay your bills, move to another state to continue working and pay your bills. Then, someone takes advantage of your situation and moves into your house and claims they were scammed.
They have been ordered to vacate the premises and yet they still resist. So, they are breaking the law.

My solution...

Get a 44 Magnum, get a locksmith and get your home back.

[Empire02]

The word ..trespass.. comes to mind, am I missing something?

[ProtectandServe]

Wait for a judge to tell me I can go back in my own home that people took over? I don't think so.

If that was my house they would have been looking down the business end of a handgun if I came home and they were inside.

[HotSoup]

Yeah I'd be going back with my gun and removing them at gun point....I'd be legally allowed to defend my home and use whatever force needed to get them out.

[btfp]

I'd drag them outside and beat the snot out of them. If they came back they would be shot. If they copped an attitude that it was their house etc I'd shoot them right there for burglary.

[Rblake]

I can't say my response is any different from above. I'm confused and angered that there is any question about this. Even if a patrol officer didn't understand the paperwork, one should be able to verify tax records, take statements and a complaint, then make a pretty quick decision to drag the trespassers out of the house. Then again, perhaps admin decided on this one.

[ateamer]

I wouldn't be waiting for a judge. They're out the door - or windows, or off the deck - and can get off my property by foot, car or ambulance. Doesn't matter how.

[HEDP]

It's happening in Texas too. I guess the law dates back to the olden days and allows squatters to move in. And it is legal.

[Tmg]

It's happening in Texas too. I guess the law dates back to the olden days and allows squatters to move in. And it is legal.

Yeah it happened by me in Texas. The Texas one was very different though. I believe in the Texas case, the house was foreclosed on by a finance company. The finance company went out of business and the house was just there. The house ended up still being owned by some other bank but that bank had this house slip through the cracks. The Guy ended up having to move out. It was something crazy like that.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Texas...125528248.html

[reils49]

We had a crazy pull this sort of crap here in NYS. He owned a house, stopped paying the mortgage, and the bank began the foreclosure process. The crazy abandons the house and disappears, and shortly thereafter the house is bought by an nice older retired couple. They repair the home, sink their hard earned money into making the "retirement home of their dreams"...until one day they come home and find this bum on their couch, claiming to still be the legal owner of the property.

They come down to the barracks to make a complaint, I go out thinking I'm going arrest this guy for burglary, come to find out he had changed the locks, and was armed with some quasi-legal documentation supporting his claim of ownership, and had set about making himself comfortable in their home. I had a hell of a time sorting through this mess, and the good people ended up getting screwed. He filed all the sovereign style "paper terrorism" forms in court, and really scared these folks. They got their house back, but they had to pay for a lawyer, court fees, and it took a few months. Finally the Sheriff's Office was ordered by the court to remove him from the home.

[Yankee_1]

"What the hell are you doing in my house?"
"We own this house , we bought it from Mr. Carillo"
"Mr. Carillo???, hmmm Have you meet Mr. Remington?
problem solved!

[asullivan]

Hell they could have my spread, give em' my goddamn house...



As long as they wud' take all my wifes wid' it!

[Vorkon]

Hell they could have my spread, give em' my goddamn house...



As long as they wud' take all my wifes wid' it!

LMAO yeah I know right?

[SOI]

Around here we would've heard one of two radio dispatches:

1) "Any available unit responded to (address) for a report of a homeowner with multiple burglars held at gunpoint."

or

2) "All available units respond to a report of shots fired at (address). Home owner advises he has shot multiple burglars in his home. Suspects still at gunpoint. Secure scene for EMS entry."

And it would've been followed by some non-homeowners in handcuffs at some point and the homeowners spending the night in their own beds.

[MargeGunderson]

Nearly every post on here indicates that the person would completely bypass our useless court system (notice I didn't use the word "justice" when referring to our courts) shoot dead the losers who tried to steal their homes.

That is the ONLY way you would never have to worry about these creeps coming back to harass you day after day, or vandalize the property repeatedly, or worse, take over and change the locks all over again when you're all at work and/or school.

It's also the only deterrent for other pathetic losers trying the same thing on others' homes.

[MargeGunderson]

Hell they could have my spread, give em' my goddamn house...



As long as they wud' take all my wifes wid' it!

Does that include all of your o dot com wifeys fighting for you here, Sully? Or just the ones you actually have to buy flowers for on all the appropriate occasions? (personally, I'd far prefer Seahawks or Huskies tickets, but hey, to each their own...)

[asullivan]

Does that include all of your o dot com wifeys fighting for you here, Sully? Or just the ones you actually have to buy flowers for on all the appropriate occasions? (personally, I'd far prefer Seahawks or Huskies tickets, but hey, to each their own...)

go on big man, answer sweety MG...

Cat got your dirty tongue?, you loser.

[MDPOLICE]

Sovereign citizens were doing this crazy crap not too long ago in the news.

[lpstopper]

I was going to post about how If it were me, what I would have done, but my fellow brothers have already spoken for me.

[VA Dutch]

My first thought - and I admit is wasn't a very good one - was to pop in a can or two of CS gas to clear out the 'squatters' from my house. Oh well, my mind works in mysterious ways.

Mr. Colt and Mr. Ruger would have been welcome assistants for an "eviction" of such scum, however.

[BTR1701]

Carpenter said the police won't usually get involved because it's a civil, not a criminal matter. However, Donovan and her husband were ordered to stay 100 yards away from their home after Fernandez-Beleta and Levya-Caraveo requested temporary restraining orders. The orders were issued on July 3.

"People who are even on an extended vacation need to be aware of this situation because once someone illegally occupies your home, you can't just have the cops arrest them," because they need to be caught in the act of breaking in and entering, Donovan said.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

So you go to work and come home in the afternoon to find someone sitting on
your sofa, eating your food and watching your TV, but you can't have him
arrested or even kicked out of your home because you didn't happen to catch
him in the actual act of breaking through the door or window? I guess if
it's nighttime and you sleep through the initial break-in and only wake up
in time to find someone lurking in your home, you just have to hand over
your home to the burglar and go get a lawyer because it's now a civil
matter? Idiotic.

[Dinosaur32]

Colorado is one screwed up state.

[JD_TO]

Every couple years we clean up our houses and throw away things we no longer need, or have no purpose anymore. I think the same needs to be done for some of the laws on the books.

[irish21]

Colorado is one screwed up state.

I was actually thinking about retiring there someday...Not too sure after this week! Wisconsin is still nice right?

[NYCDep]

This couple is still in for an additional few months of not getting to use their house. The next step is the eviction process. It's called a process because it can take a while. The people being evicted can file all sorts of Orders to Show Cause and keep the eviction stayed for months until a judge hears and dismisses all their claims.

The problem with these cases is that the squatters were there long enough to establish residency. Once residency is established, they have certain legal rights. Even if they had no right to be there in the first place, they gain rights after a period of time in much the same way you can't rent out your house and then go back and just throw out the people you rented to without doing an eviction.

For all of you who would just go and throw them out at gunpoint, you would get in trouble, at least in NYS for doing that. By now those people probably have driver's licenses, utilities, etc, proving that they live there, and can't be removed unless evicted by court order.