2026-09-10 · Iowa · Courts

Iowa associations own a great deal of ground they never mow: greenbelts, pond frontage, buffer strips. Adjoining owners improve and absorb it routinely. A 2025 decision says that pattern alone does not transfer title. Worrell v. Lake Crest Manor Home Owners Association, No. 23-2028, was decided by the Iowa Court of Appeals on May 7, 2025.¹

What happened

Brad Worrell bought a rural Johnson County lot in 1993 without checking the plat, having been told the lot ran to the shore of a pond. It did not. A strip along the pond, jutting into his lot's south-west corner, belonged to the neighbouring Lake Crest Manor Home Owners Association.

Worrell said that in 1994 he struck a deal: Lake Crest Manor could use a gravel road across his land to reach a wastewater facility, and in exchange his lot would be replatted to the pond. No deed or other document ever memorialised it.

Over the following decades the Worrells cleared timber, graded and seeded to the pond, spent roughly $100,000 improving the land, built a three-storey scaffolding play structure with a six-foot fence and no-trespassing signs on the corner parcel, and put a dock in the pond.

The association never maintained the land. But it investigated tree removal in 2001, told Worrell to stop pumping pond water, encouraged members to use the area for fishing, hiking and mushroom hunting, and had members drive across the strip to dump trash. After a 2018 survey it asserted ownership. The Worrells removed the dock but not the fence or tower, and sued in 2019.

After a bench trial the district court awarded them the fenced corner parcel on adverse possession and rejected everything else. Only the Worrells appealed.

Why the rest of the claim failed

Affirmed, on two independent grounds.

No good-faith claim of right. Under Carpenter v. Ruperto, 315 N.W.2d 782, 784-86 (Iowa 1982), adverse possession is unavailable to one who knows he has no claim or title; hostile, actual, open, exclusive and continuous possession for ten years is not enough without a good-faith claim of right. The only evidence of the 1994 transfer was minutes from the Worrells' own association plus their assumption that a deal had been struck — not the clear and positive proof required.

No exclusivity, and not continuously hostile for ten years. The Worrells never fenced the disputed strip, never excluded Lake Crest Manor members — they did not stop members driving tractors and mowers across it to dump trash — and removed the dock when asked in 2018. That conduct was “inconsistent with the acts of an exclusive owner.” The initial 1990s clearing likely was hostile, actual and open, but that level of conduct was not continuous for ten years, and within a few years the association was policing its boundary.

Publication status unconfirmed — we could not locate a National Reporter citation, so whether this opinion is controlling under Iowa R. App. P. 6.904(2)(c) is unresolved.

1. Worrell v. Lake Crest Manor Home Owners Ass'n, No. 23-2028 (Iowa Ct. App. May 7, 2025), opinion (PDF) ↩
2. Iowa Judicial Branch, Court of Appeals opinion archive, 2025 — official case summary ↩