In law, acquiescence occurs when a person knowingly stands by, without raising any objection to, the infringement of their rights, while someone else unknowingly and without malice aforethought acts in a manner inconsistent with their rights.
The doctrine infers a form of "permission" that results from silence or passiveness over an extended period of time.
One common context in which acquiescence is raised is when there is a dispute or disagreement over the location of a property line, followed by an extended period of time during which the parties respect a property line.
[2] The court said that Georgia had knowingly allowed South Carolina to join the island as a peninsula to its own coast by dumping sand from dredging, and to then levy property taxes on it for decades.
Georgia thereby lost the island-turned-peninsula by its own acquiescence, even though the treaty had given it all of the islands in the river.