balinda, excellent question!

I wish I had a definate answer for you, but I think that this is a really REALLY gray area. There are some caches near me that have not been maintained, so for the past 4 years, I have been doing what I can to preserve them because they are such awesome locations. I have tried repeatedly to adopt them to no avail. Just recently, I was told that these containers are not my property or the property of groundspeak and I also understand that if I want to have a cache in the area, I just need to wait for the ones there to deteriorate until they are archived due to no response from the owner. It's a catch 22 for sure. I sure wish there was a better way!

Good luck!