I just can't help it. It gnaws at me. I have this compulsion to tell them what a huge mistake they are making. But, no, I can't do that. Ignorance is bliss. Right?
Less than a half mile from where I sit, three people I know are royally screwing up their property. They come from that school of thought where spending money is a bigger sin than doing something incredibly stupid. It really wouldn't cost very much, in my opinion, but they assume it would be outrageous.
Eight years ago or so both of their parents died within a fairly short span of time. There are two brothers and a sister between the ages of 68 and 73 finally splitting the mixed bag of properties owned by their parents. In less than one day's time I could lay out the property split any way they want it done. I have all of the control already. I've known them for over 50 years so I would give them a really good deal. I did two jobs last year that required the same control so I know that it's there. They worked out a plan to split the largest, but oddly-shaped, tract into three somewhat equal chunks. Somebody typed up their homemade descriptions based on old deeds (that contain errors) and the county appraiser's map. Meanwhile, they are assuming that certain fences are along the lines they should be following. Oh, but they aren't even close. Yesterday I noticed a new stretch of barb wire fence that is twenty feet too far west and several hundred feet long. That suggests some additional fencing will soon be erected in a couple of other wrong places, by close to the same amount of error. I have told the one brother (the local one) about how the fences are in the wrong places on more than one occasion in the past. He is very unhappy with how he didn't end up with all of the land so this may be a way to damage his siblings in revenge. On the other hand, he always wanted to argue that I didn't know what I was talking about. You know how it works. You have to be more than 50 miles from home to be a respected expert on anything.
I am going to see this disaster all the time and be reminded of how foolish they are. Nice people for the most part. They just don't want to spend a nickle to get their inheritance.
Just the issue of erroneous fence lines is sufficient reason to stay quiet HC. I've seen families come to blows, arguing over a few feet of where a fence should be in the Sandhills.
Somebody typed up their homemade descriptions based on old deeds (that contain errors) and the county appraiser's map. Meanwhile, they are assuming that certain fences are along the lines they should be following. Oh, but they aren't even close.
The only thing that I would be concerned about is the "Somebody"
mentioned who prepared the descriptions from the tax maps.
Sounds like an attorney or some legal counsel of some sort. That would be the only issue that might produce a scab to pick so to speak. But as Gene Kooper has posted, it may be wiser to keep your nose out of the matter.
After all by all current discussions here,
the landowners have the ultimate right to mark the boundaries as they see fit by any reasoning such as established fences, new fences etc
Just because you have survey control and knowledge of the property does not necessarily make you the boundary decider and it is no matter that you could have offfered your services for a discount as special friends or fellow homey.
That is absolutely correct.
The problem is my lust for putting things in order.................and keeping them there.
The three siblings involved may all be happier than a bunch of hogs with a trough full of slop.
I know how to fix the problem. I'll buy every bit of it from the three of them and return it to being a single parcel. Kind of an expensive way to cure my OCD. It would make a little bit of sense. I own a much larger tract that abuts the far western end of their land, so I could put a gate in the existing fence (which accidentally happens to be on line) and let the bovines munch on their grass.
Down the street from my house a couple moved in. Within a few months a fence was getting erected. Driving by one day I saw that the wife was building it, digging in holes and such. After a few holes were dug, she decided to realign it because of a tree that was online. So she moved it well into the right of way of the street, a real no-no. I kept expecting to see a city crew or building code guy show up and flag her. Never happened, 15 years later and two owners later the fence is still there, I'm glad I didn't say anything to the women, she didn't ask and I kept it to myself. Still bugs me though.;)
I feel your pain. Really. I do.
N
Landowners own the land can can do mostly what they want and this includes screwing up the descriptions at will. In Utah after 20 years or so they will sleep in the beds they make, the sloppy and careless boundaries hacked on the kitchen table will become the boundary.
The court sort of summed it up in 1963:
King v. Fronk, 378 P. 2d 893 - Utah: Supreme Court 1963
It is significant that in most cases, a physical, visible means of marking the boundary was effected at a time when it was cheaper to risk the mistake of a few feet rather than to argue about it, go to court, or indulge the luxury of a survey, pursuance of any of which motives may have proved more costly than the possible but most expedient sacrifice of a small land area.The rub comes when, after many years, land value appreciation tempts a test of the vulnerability of a claimed ancient boundary. The struggle usually involves economics. Nothing is wrong in the urge to acquire or retain. But neither is there anything wrong in the law's espousal of a doctrine that says that with the passage of a long time, accompanied by an ancient visible line marked by monuments with other pertinent and particular facts, and with a do-nothing history on the part of the parties concerned, can result in putting to rest titles to property and prevent protracted and often belligerent litigation usually attended by dusty memory, departure of witnesses, unavailability of trustworthy testimony, irritation with neighbors and the like. This idea is based on the concept that we must live together in a spirit justifying repose or fixation of titles where there has been a disposition on the part of neighbors to leave an ancient boundary as is without taking some affirmative action to assert rights inconsistent with evidence of a visible, long-standing boundary. In the vernacular, the doctrine might be paraphrased to enunciate that boundaries might be established by an "I don't give a hoot" attitude on the part of neighbors.
