Walternative Views - Walt Junewick, lawyer instructor of paralegal students

The chief right is possession. Possession needn't include actual occupancy, but may be evidenced by cultivation, enclosure, and construction of improvements. Most important feature of possession is the right to exclude others, for example, trespassers, by a legal suit for eviction and damages.
Right to use the land for pleasure or profit.
Rights to dispose of ownership (alienation) by sale, heritance, gift, partition, pledge.
Right to permit uses by others.

Inheritance and devise: One can inherit land as a beneficiary of a decedent, either through a will, or by means of intestate succession where there is no will. A deed is prepared through the probate court.
Gift: One can receive a gift of a deed and ownership of land. The grantor of the gift wll deliver possession and a signed deed.
Contract and sale: One may sign a purchase contract and buy land under the terms of the contract. The seller will sign a deed and deliver possession.
Adverse possession: One may obtain legal ownership of land by possessing it adverse to the interest of the owner of record. Generally statutes will create the "prescriptive" period of time and the adverse possessor (or squatter) will have to occupy the land in an open way, not sneaky, and continuously. (But tacking by one individual on a related individual's initial adverse possession may be allowed, to make up the entire prescriptive time.) Frequently the prescriptive period is 20 years, depending on the state. Note that the adverse possessor is not in legal possession but is in possession nevertheless, so could exclude others, except the owner, from the land. After a person becomes the legal owner through adverse possession, they cannot show documentary proof of ownership. For that, they will have to file a suit to "quiet title," to prove they are the legal owner through adverse possession. The judgment would give them the ability to sign a deed if they ever wanted to sell the property.