Squatters and vacant property in Alabama: what the law says

1 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 5(a) — codified in Ala. Code Title 35, Ch. 9B (Squatting), eff. 2024-06-01

Quoted verbatim from the enrolled Act on the Alabama Legislature's own server, including the missing period after "occupy the dwelling", which is how the enrolled text reads. Note who is NOT a squatter: a tenant who stays past the end of a lease. That person is still in the eviction system.

2 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 5(b)

Chapters 9 and 9A of Title 35 are Alabama's landlord-and-tenant law. This sentence is the whole hinge: it is what lets a squatter be removed by a police agency instead of a court.

3 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(b)(4)

The enrolled text cites "Section 34-9A-441" here; the holdover-tenancy section is 35-9A-441, and § 5(a) of the same Act cites it correctly. We quote what the Act says and flag the discrepancy rather than silently correcting it.

1 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(d) — what law enforcement does

A CLAIM ABOUT OUR OWN SEARCH, NOT ABOUT THE LAW: we read the enrolled text of HB 182 in full on 2026-07-14 and looked for any provision letting the owner change the locks, cut a utility, remove belongings, or enter to confront the occupant — including with an officer standing by, which several other states expressly permit. We found no such provision. Every act the Act describes is an officer's act.

2 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(h) — wrongful removal

Read who is exposed. Subsection (g) immunizes the officer and the agency; subsection (h) points the lawsuit at the affiant — the owner. The person who gets this wrong is you.

3 · Ala. Code § 35-9A-407 — tenant's remedies for landlord's unlawful ouster, exclusion, or diminution of service · secondhand source

SECONDARY: the official Code of Alabama is hosted by LexisNexis and blocks automated retrieval, so this was read on a reproduction of the code and should be confirmed against the official text. Note the two limits, and the trap inside them. This section protects a TENANT — and HB 182 § 5(b) expressly puts a squatter outside the chapter it sits in. Whether the ban reaches a squatter is a question we found no Alabama case deciding, and untested is not the same as permitted. The person who finds out which it is will be the defendant, and the man in your doorway will be telling a judge he had a lease.

1 · Ala. Code § 13A-7-2 — criminal trespass in the first degree · secondhand source

SECONDARY: the official Code of Alabama sits behind LexisNexis, which blocks automated retrieval; read on FindLaw and to be confirmed against the official code. The word that carries the weight is "dwelling" — a building used or normally used for sleeping, living or lodging. The grade turns on it.

2 · Ala. Code §§ 13A-7-3, 13A-7-4 — criminal trespass in the second and third degree · secondhand source

SECONDARY: read on a reproduction of the code (onecle); confirm against the official text. The ellipsis joins two adjacent sections, quoted in full. This is the link that killed a previous market of ours in another state: an offense can be called "criminal trespass" and still be graded so low that the encounter ends with a piece of paper. In Alabama the grade rises with the building — and a house is the top of that ladder.

3 · Ala. Code § 13A-7-7, as amended by HB 182 (2024) — burglary in the third degree

Quoted from the enrolled Act with the bill's strike-throughs removed and its underlined insertions applied — i.e. the section as amended. Paragraph (4) is new in 2024. The ellipsis skips paragraphs (2) and (3), which cover occupied and unoccupied buildings on the same terms.

4 · Ala. Code § 15-10-3(a) — arrest without a warrant · secondhand source

SECONDARY: read on a reproduction of the code (onecle); confirm against the official text. Read the difference between the paragraphs. For a felony, probable cause is enough. For anything less, the statute speaks of an offense in the officer's presence — and trespass in a dwelling is a "remains unlawfully" offense. We draw no conclusion about how that applies to a person standing in your kitchen; that is not ours to draw.

5 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(d) and § 4(j)

The ellipsis joins subsection (d) to subsection (j) of the same section; both are quoted in full. Note the words "may" and "if appropriate". The statute grants authority; it does not command anyone. These are the provisions, in order. We have drawn no conclusion from them.

1 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(c) — the statutory affidavit form

The ellipses skip numbered items of the same form, which we read in full. A government-issued ID establishes that you are the person named on it. It establishes nothing about the deed. The form nowhere asks for a deed, a title record, a tax bill, or a recording number — and item 4 asks the owner to swear a lease is fraudulent before anyone has seen it.

2 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(d) — verification of the owner

A CLAIM ABOUT OUR OWN SEARCH, NOT ABOUT THE LAW: we read the enrolled text of HB 182 in full on 2026-07-14 and looked for any provision telling a law enforcement agency HOW to verify that the affiant is the record owner — a deed check, a probate-office lookup, a registry, a database, a form, anything. We found no such provision. The duty is stated; the method is not. (We begin this quote at "shall verify" because the enrolled text carries a typographical error in the words immediately before it, and we will not silently correct a source.)

3 · Ala. Code § 13A-10-102, as amended by HB 182 (2024) — perjury in the second degree

Quoted from the enrolled Act with the bill's strike-throughs removed and its underlined insertions applied. The forged lease is now a crime in Alabama — but somebody still has to establish that it is forged, and the statute names nobody whose job that is at 2am. Making the lie illegal is not the same as making it checkable.

1 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(b) — the request for removal

The ellipsis skips element (4), which is quoted in full under the first question on this page. Note element (7): if you are already in litigation with the person, this route is closed to you.

2 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(e) — the notice at the dwelling

3 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 5(b)

This route exists only for a person who is not a tenant and not a holdover tenant, as § 5(a) defines those terms. Where the occupant is one of those, the eviction chapters this sentence excludes are the ones you are in — and we did not research Alabama's ordinary eviction timeline for this page.

1 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(d) — the 24-hour clock

"At least 24 hours" is a floor, not a deadline. The statute sets no outer limit on how long the agency's verification may take, and how long that is in practice is not a question the statute answers.

2 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(k) — the fee cap

This is the only dollar figure on this page, and it appears verbatim in the enacted text. It is a ceiling, not a price — the statute says "may charge" and "not more than", and what any given agency actually charges is not in the law. We could not fetch a published fee schedule from any Alabama law enforcement agency, so we print no other number.

3 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(f) and § 4(h)

The ellipsis joins subsection (f) to subsection (h) of the same section. Fifty dollars is what the route costs when it is right. Triple the fair market rent, court costs and the other side's attorney is what it costs when it is wrong — and the statute points that liability at the person who signed.

1 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(b) — where the affidavit is filed

2 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 4(d) — verification, then service

A CLAIM ABOUT OUR OWN SEARCH: we read the enrolled Act in full on 2026-07-14 and found no judge, no magistrate, no court order and no hearing anywhere in this route — and no counter-affidavit procedure of the kind Georgia has, by which the occupant can stop the removal with a sworn page of their own. The occupant's remedy under this Act comes AFTER they are out: a lawsuit against the owner under subsection (h). This is the species of law that hands the owner the mechanism, and Alabama has it.

3 · Alabama HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), enrolled, § 7 — effective date

This law is widely miscited as "SB 61". It is not. The vehicle was HB 182, by Representative Lipscomb, first read 15 February 2024, passed the House 4 April 2024, amended and passed by the Senate 25 April 2024, with the House concurring the same day — all of which is printed on the enrolled Act we quote from. It is codified in Title 35, Chapter 9B of the Code of Alabama. We were not able to fetch the official codified text (the Code of Alabama is hosted by LexisNexis, which blocks automated retrieval), so we quote the enrolled Act and could not confirm that no later session has amended Chapter 9B.

1 · Ala. Code § 6-5-200(a) — when adverse possession may confer title to land · secondhand source

SECONDARY: the official Code of Alabama is hosted by LexisNexis, which blocks automated retrieval; this was read on a reproduction of the code (onecle) and should be confirmed against the official text. Read the words rather than the number: the clock does not start because a building sat empty. It starts on a recorded document, or on ten years of somebody else paying tax on your house in their own name.

2 · Ala. Code § 6-5-200(b) · secondhand source

SECONDARY: read on a reproduction of the code; confirm against the official text. Alabama lawyers also speak of a longer "prescriptive" period developed by the courts rather than by this statute. That rule is not in this section, we could not fetch a primary source for it, and so we do not state it. A caution rather than a comfort: nothing here says a person without paper is safe to ignore.