Kentucky Squatter Removal Law: Police-Based Process

KRS 383.290, created by 2025 Kentucky Acts Chapter 63 (House Bill 10), lets a property owner submit a petition to law enforcement seeking the immediate removal of an unlawful occupant, without going through a forcible-detainer action in court.

[Cite: KRS 383.290, created by 2025 Kentucky Acts ch. 63, § 1]

An officer receiving that petition verifies the petitioner's identity, and if satisfied the statutory conditions are met, serves the occupant with notice to vacate and puts the owner back in possession of the property.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

This process isn't available just because an owner believes someone shouldn't be on the property. The statute requires all five of the following to be true at once: the person is not and never has been a tenant of the premises; the person never had a written or oral agreement authorized by the owner to occupy the property; the property wasn't open to members of the public when the person entered; the owner has directed the person to leave; and the person isn't an immediate family member of the owner.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

A sixth condition applies alongside those five: there can't be any pending litigation related to the property between the owner and any known unauthorized person.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

Compared to how some other states have handled squatter-related legislation, this is a notably precise line. The statute doesn't just say the person lacks current permission to be there; it requires that the person never had a tenancy, and never had any written or oral occupancy agreement authorized by the owner, at any point.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

That precision closes off the most obvious risk with a police-based removal process: using it against someone who was a legitimate tenant at some point but has since fallen behind on rent, overstayed a lease, or become otherwise difficult. If that history exists at all, this removal path isn't available, and the owner has to use the standard forcible-detainer process instead.

This is worth stating directly rather than inferring it from the five conditions alone, since the statute spells it out as its own separate provision. The procedures created by this law are not applicable to, and cannot be enforced against, a person who is a current or former tenant of the premises, or who once had an agreement with the property owner permitting occupancy.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

That's a clean, explicit carve-out written directly into the statute's own text, not something left to interpretation or later case law to sort out.

A person removed under this process who shouldn't have been has a specific remedy. They can bring an action for wrongful removal, and a prevailing plaintiff is entitled to be restored to possession of the property, along with court costs and reasonable attorney's fees, plus other appropriate relief.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

That action has to be filed within 60 days, in the district court where the property is located.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

A 60-day window to challenge a wrongful removal isn't indefinite, but it's not brief either. An owner considering this process should understand that using it against someone whose tenancy status is genuinely ambiguous, rather than clearly absent, carries real exposure for two months after the removal, not just in the moment it happens.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

Given that a prevailing plaintiff recovers attorney's fees on top of being restored to possession, the financial and practical cost of misusing this process against someone who turns out to have had some form of occupancy agreement is meaningful, not nominal.

Governor Beshear signed House Bill 10 on March 24, 2025. The law didn't carry an emergency clause, meaning it didn't take effect immediately upon signing. Instead, it followed Kentucky's standard general effective date for laws passed during the 2025 Regular Session, which fell on June 27, 2025.

[Cite: 2025 Kentucky Acts ch. 63; KRS 383.290 statutory history]

That's worth confirming directly rather than assuming, since a law signed in March could easily be mistaken for one already in force well before summer.

This law doesn't replace forcible-detainer actions for the vast majority of landlord-tenant disputes. Non-payment, lease violations, and holdover situations involving anyone who was ever a lawful tenant still have to go through Kentucky's standard eviction process, exactly as before this law existed.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

What this law adds is a narrower, faster option specifically for the scenario where someone occupying a property never had any lawful basis to be there in the first place, a category the statute defines with real specificity rather than leaving open to case-by-case judgment calls.

One of the five conditions requires that the property wasn't open to members of the public when the unauthorized person entered.

[Cite: KRS 383.290]

That condition matters for properties like short-term rental listings, model units, or commercial-adjacent spaces where public access might have been permitted at some point. An owner relying on this process needs to be able to show the property wasn't open to the public at the specific time the occupant entered, not just that it's normally private.

The practical starting point is training staff to distinguish, before ever invoking this process, between a genuine trespasser who meets all the statutory conditions and anyone with any tenancy history at all, however informal or discontinued. Given the explicit statutory exclusion for tenants, misclassifying a difficult or non-paying tenant as an unauthorized occupant under this provision creates real legal exposure rather than a faster resolution.

Documenting the basis for each of the five conditions before submitting a petition to law enforcement, rather than relying on a general impression that someone doesn't belong on the property, gives an owner a defensible record if a wrongful removal claim is later filed within that 60-day window.