Welcome to my world.
Probably 95 percent of all surveys and deeds of record in this area have absolutely no mention of monuments at corners. You start off with "The southwest quarter of Section 16." Later comes "The northwest quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 16." Then comes "The north 800 feet of the northwest quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 16." Eventually the following arrives, "Beginning at the northwest corner of the northwest quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 16, thence south 200 feet, east 200 feet, north 200 feet, thence west to place of beginning." Sometime after that appears, "Beginning at......; thence south (an assumed bearing) along the west section line, a distance of 142.4 feet; thence north 89 degrees east (parallel with the quarter section line), 144.6 feet; thence north 142.4 feet to the quarter section line; thence south 89 degrees west, 144.6 feet to the point of beginning." Now the description gets longer by clarifying how the assumed bearing has been selected and bearings are to minutes and seconds, while extra words are added to clarify other potential concerns. Throughout, you will find absolutely no monuments mentioned. The surveys, however, are filed for view by the entire world. On those surveys, monuments are shown and dimensions provided along with other vital information. The survey recording and the deed recording are normally unrelated to one another.
Therefore, anyone declaring an apparent monument to be of no concern to the current surveyor will get his hiney ripped off and handed to him on a rusty trash can lid. You find a monument. You find a survey that reports such a monument was set at what was intended to be that location. Use it as gospel unless you start finding several others within spitting distant set by a bunch of buttonpushers who couldn't find a 1937 Ford axle sticking up 6" in a kid's sandbox. In that case, call up the idiot buttonpushers and suggest they throw their equipment off a high bridge into a dry river and then jump after it.
This may sound outlandish to many of you. Nevertheless, that has been and continues to be how the vast majority of surveys, deeds and easements are handled within 100 miles of here.
Hear-hear!
Connecticut surveying
swap out your calls to a 1/4 section...and you may as well be surveying in most parts around here!!!
Amen brother Cow.
Try our typical description (without any surveys of record):
Begininng at a point 24 rods north of a point 40 rods south and 138 rods east of the Northwest corner of the southwest quarter of section.......... thence south 10 rods, thence west 4.5 rods, thence north 10 rods, thence east 4.5 rods to the POB.
And those are lots in Town!!!
But I bet you wouldn't be surprised at how many "surveyors" locate the w1/4 and run cardinal and record and tell their client they "own" 5 feet of the neighbors yard/house/driveway, etc.
Yep, I've taken many an aspirin.
I've noticed that, too..
One of the local municipalities here in Central OK, requires a survey for a lot split in a platted area, with a metes-and-bounds description of all the 'pieces'. That in itself ruffles me, but anyway...
It was an older plat and had some 'fuzzy' math on the lot dimensions. Luckily I found all the corners existing and called the monuments out in my description. The gear-head in charge of permits called me and wanted those calls removed from the description. I think he said it just "didn't look right".
I wanted to tell him to poop-and-roll-in-it...but I was a nice old grey-haired guy and took the time to explain to him the importance of leaving them in the description. I guess he finally saw it my way. The lot split was approved and I never changed the description.
Some people, huh?
"...will get his hiney ripped off and handed to him on a rusty trash can lid."
Not to trivialize your legitimate complaint, but that sounds like something that could, really, only happen to a cow:-).
Don
Yeah, the nice thing about these descriptions in my county is the perfect math. Usually they all add out to complete the section at 5280 x 5280, square and cardinal (in chains, links and rods in the old deeds but converted to feet [to the hundredth] in the modern versions). I'm impressed at how well they taught arithmetic a hundred or so years ago. I've even pointed out that most sections are not 80 chains east/west and not cardinal (in original GLO plats and notes), but no matter, in our records they are. So when I tell them I don't think there really are gaps and overlaps (I've never fell into a gap yet out on the ground or got trapped in a time warp of an overlap) I usually get the deer in the headlights stare.
So I spend years studying to get a handle on it so I could help folks out and then this year a title guy in the legislature (from Cache Valley) pushes through a bill that says all boundary line agreements must be in the form of quit claim deeds (no more agreement to establish uncertain boundaries, you must convey it). So its all been for naught, might as well hang up the GPS before LightSquared wipes it out. Yep, I'm just waiting for the Utah Supreme Court to hear that landowners can't settle their uncertain boundaries any longer per Utah Statute, I mean, according to the title folks we don't have any problems according to the math in the records. I suppose when the big predicted earthquake hits the state sometime in the future it will be to square it all up to what's on paper in the recorders office (close the gaps and remove the overlaps). What else has God to do anyway? You'd think something has to give between paper and dirt. So there you have it.
Well, we have a bunch of surveyors that are going to fix this ship(sp) to the record without called-for monumentation, been working on it for decades now. From my viewpoint it's just getting worse (a view held by many landowners - don't let a surveyor near your property).
Another Very Wrong Assumption
A call for an aliquot parcel or in any other way for a part of an aliquot parcel, is a call to to all relevant monuments. It is much more powerful than a metes and bounds description with monuments, because if an adjacent monument is missing there is specific instruction to move on to the next monument and so on with very specific rules of reconstruction.
Paul in PA
It's got to be disheartening when the current authority you look to for guidance and support, contradicts what it and it's predecessors have been teaching for a thousand years previous.
All you can say is: Bollocks! :-X
Except for the fact
The problem is that probably 90 percent of the original monuments no longer exist. They have been replaced by other monuments at some time over the past 100+ years with something, somewhere. Then that monument may have been destroyed and replaced, possibly some distance from the original corner. Meanwhile, landowners through the years have established their own form of monuments along and near the boundaries, in good faith and peace with their neighbors. Eventually, some perfect world/expert measurer/high tech guy comes along and grabs some combination of existing monuments established by a grab bag of surveyors in different years using different assumptions and then calculates to 17 decimal places the precise location of the TRUE corners of some aliquot part of the section which may not resemble the original aliquot.
Working from a combination of non-original monuments is probably much worse than having none to use.
Except for the fact
Hole,
Isn't it funny how they use monuments that they wouldn't hold (they're a little off) ...to disprove another monument!
> So I spend years studying to get a handle on it so I could help folks out and then this year a title guy in the legislature (from Cache Valley) pushes through a bill that says all boundary line agreements must be in the form of quit claim deeds (no more agreement to establish uncertain boundaries, you must convey it).
Leon,
Do you know the legislators name?
Which Title & section are you refering to?
The only one I've found so far is:
57-1-45. Boundary line agreements.
(1) If properly executed and acknowledged as required under this chapter, an agreement between property owners designating the boundary line between their properties, when recorded in the office of the recorder of the county in which the property is located, shall act as a quitclaim deed and convey all of each party's right, title, interest, and estate in property outside the agreed boundary line that had been the subject of the boundary dispute that led to the boundary line agreement.
(2) A boundary line agreement described in Subsection (1) shall include:
(a) a legal description of the agreed upon boundary line;
(b) the signature of each grantor;
(c) a sufficient acknowledgment for each grantor's signature; and
(d) the address of each grantee for assessment purposes.
If this is the one you are referring to, unless I'm mis-reading it, it only says that BLA's "shall act as a quit claim deed and convey..." Which in itself is kinda weird, as an agreed boundary does not convey anything. But, strictly reading this statute, an implied or verbal agreement still doesn't convey anything, but an express and recorded agreement does. Huh? Title people - sigh.
Your have grantor's and a CONVEYANCE. That from my view is not just fixing in position an uncertain line. It makes them all boundary line adjustments which kicks in P&Z review and approval. It also creates a winner and loser, a landowner is conveying land to the neighbor (might not agree to that). This a lot more complicated than recording affidavits of an agreement.
The legislator runs a title company in Logan. The recorders in Utah along with some county surveyors were in on it also. For the most part none of them have a clue about boundary law. UCLS wouldn't fight it, I'm no longer a member.
This goes way beyond educating surveyors as some good progress there has been made in Utah. I don't even have a clue how to address the problem in the title companies, recorders and even the county surveyors. There is very little respect for surveyors in Utah and the legislative money is elsewhere. The inbred cultural deficiency concering land boundaries is very deep, I've mostly lost hope for it ever being brought back to the common law.
They tweaked this 100 year old statute also.
57-1-13. Form of quitclaim deed -- Effect.
(1) A conveyance of land may also be substantially in the following form:
"QUITCLAIM DEED
____ (here insert name), grantor, of ____ (insert place of residence), hereby quitclaims to ____ (insert name), grantee, of ____ (here insert place of residence), for the sum of ____ dollars, the following described tract ____ of land in ____ County, Utah, to wit: (here describe the premises).
Witness the hand of said grantor this __________(monthdayyear).
A quitclaim deed when executed as required by law shall have the effect of a conveyance of all right, title, interest, and estate of the grantor in and to the premises therein described and all rights, privileges, and appurtenances thereunto belonging, at the date of the conveyance."
(2) For a boundary line agreement operating as a quitclaim deed as described in Section 57-1-45, the boundary line agreement shall include, in addition to a legal description of the agreed upon boundary line:
(a) the signature of each grantor;
(b) a sufficient acknowledgment for each grantor's signature; and
(c) the address of each grantee for assessment purposes.
Another Very Wrong Assumption
Ahhh, I actually agree with Paul in PA for once
Another Very Wrong Assumption
> ...because if an adjacent monument is missing there is specific instruction to move on to the next monument and so on with very specific rules of reconstruction.
>
Please explain and list the differences in the "instructions" for replacing a "missing" monument in a metes and bounds description vs. an aliquot part description.
I guess one would have to define "missing": obliterated or lost? Lets cover both, just for fun.
