adverse possession

[mosquitobite]

What is the name of your state? Indiana

Gonna tell you what I found first & then get to my question.
Looks to me like the Indiana Supreme Court ruled:

The new standard for appellate review - the standard of proof that allows an appellate court to overturn the lower court’s decision - is now “clear and convincing evidence.” This heightened standard means that an appellate court may not substitute its own view on the evidence; it may only ask whether a reasonable judge could draw the same conclusion from the facts presented to prove that elements of adverse possession were established by clear and convincing evidence. This heightened standard will likely result in fewer adverse possession decisions being overturned.

The Court condensed the common law elements of adverse possession into the following: (1) Control – the person claiming adverse possession must use or exercise a degree of control over the property that would be considered normal or customary considering the characteristics of the property, (2) Intent – the person must also demonstrate an intent to claim full ownership of the property superior to all others, especially the legal owner, (3) Notice – the person’s actions on the land must have given the legal owner actual or constructive notice of his intent to control the land exclusively, and (4) Duration – the previous elements need to be satisfied continuously for ten years.

The Court’s final and most notable change was its statement that it would interpret the state’s adverse possession tax statute to be satisfied not only when the person claiming adverse possession actually paid all taxes and assessments on the land being claimed, and, in addition, when that person had a reasonable and good faith belief that he had been paying taxes on the land for the required period of time.

So we bought our property in April of this year. Next to us is a .6 ac vacant lot that is almost like a jungle. It's fully overgrown and so swampy we have a horrible mosquito problem.

I grew up in this area at the end of the street and that lot has always been like this. This week I've been Sherlock Holmes TRYING to find who owns it but ended at a dead end. It seems that when the plat for the road next to ours was drawn (in 1941) it designated it to be a "parks and recreation area" for the owners of the plats on that street. Needless to say, I'm 30 years old and I've only seen it as a jungle!

I am a Realtor as well, so I'm vaguely familiar with adverse possession.

My question is, if we live here for 10+ years and we start maintaining it - can we eventually claim it? I've tried to find who pays taxes on it but even the people at the courthouse are stumped. There's NO owner in the deed book, it simply says "parks and recreation area". The original plat map says: PARK: reserved for the use of owners of lots in this plat only.

The key here is my lot is NOT in this plat.

Advice?

I figure even if we can't claim adverse possession eventually, at least a clean lot would enhance my property's value.