Woooooo doggies, this is gonna be a goodun!
Another example of what did they mean when they writ what they wrote. In 1992 the family patriarch died leaving numerous grown children to divvy up the estate. Among other tracts of land was "The North Half of Section 31." Not that it matters much, but this Section 31 will only have something like 300 acres +/- in the North Half. Two of the daughters end up splitting said North Half. First, let me point out that a U.S. Highway happens to slice off an odd-shaped and partially curved area in both what would normally be known as the NE4 and the NW4 of the section. Not a huge piece, but, significant.
The family agreement results in a deed from the trustees to the one daughter and husband for, "The East 120 acres of the North Half of Section 31 (lying north of the highway)." The other daughter receives the North Half less as stated.
Several years later a document is created addressing agricultural field terraces and a waterway that drain from the east property onto the west property. In that document the chosen key phrases are: The East 120 acres of the Northeast Quarter of Section 31 and the West 40 acres of the Northeast Quarter of Section 31.
Here are a few of the choices:
a) The line is based on a strict area calculation of all land in what would be the North Half and parallel with the east section line for a perfect area of 120 acres.
b) The line is based on a strict area calculation as above, but after subtracting however much is lost to the highway directly to the south of this area, for a perfect net area of 120 acres.
c) Split what would be the Northeast Quarter into an east 3/4 and a west 1/4 ignoring any loss to the highway, thus obtaining some number other than 120.00000000 acres.
d) It's all still owned by family members, so have them file an affidavit clarifying the method to be used.
e) There is a stretch of barb wire fence about 1000 feet long separating crop land from pasture land that was probably installed to conform to the intended divide line. Extend it to the south line of the North Half, subtract the highway and get whatever is left.
f) Seek wisdom from land surveyors all over the globe. (My favorite, obviously.)
Good luck.
Somehow, as the story gets retold over the ages, I'm sure it will be a "surveyor's mistake" that lost the acreage.
I had a crazy one a few years ago. A quarter was divided (in this specific order)among 3 children as:
1. The north 53 1/3 acres of the NE/4
2. The north 53 1/3 acres of the south 106 2/3 acres of the NE/4
3. The south 53 1/3 acres of the NE/4
There was really plenty for all the kids...except there was almost 166 acres in the quarter. The "middle" conveyance's attorney was stuck on the fact that the first conveyance should be held at 53 1/3 acres, giving most of the excess acreage to his client.
Kids will fight over anything.
Unless they hate each other I'd get an agreement to a boundary that fits and do a boundary line adjustment to get it in the record to a new monumented and described line.
d) if that is possible. Not likely though, that you'll get an agreement.
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I'm very familiar with messy family land. My wife and her brother made a mostly reasonable split of their parents' land by each taking some of the existing legal parcels, of which there 7 adding up to about 240 acres. A century ago it was in much smaller pieces.
However, some day it could hit the fan if one of them transfers any to an outside party. It was a mess already and the division didn't help. There is an acre or two strip of one of my wife's parcels that lies beyond a creek and is being farmed as part of the her brother's field.
The road divides one of my wife's larger parcels, which would make it inconvenient for her to ever sell just one side. The road was realigned in 1949 and the owners or county didn't clean up the deeds, so a neighbor is shown as owning a thin sliver in her brother's field. Another 2-acre parcel owned by the neighbor has a fraction of an acre on my wife's side. His parcel is split by the realigned road, the big creek, and a little creek, so all he can reasonably use is about a half acre to park machinery on, and we're acting as if we have an unrecorded access easement by prescription and necessity across it to get to her larger parcel on that side.
It would cost more than the fragments of land are worth to clear up the record, probably requiring a replat to be approved by the county. I'm reasonably sure there never were "official" monuments to mark most of the parcels. And it involves two irregular sections. I'm not sure if there is such a thing as a boundary line adjustment there and haven't consulted a local expert.
And her brother has a 12-acre parcel that was once all 1 chain by 10 chain wood lots, now pasture, and two of the lots went for back taxes a long long time before he bought so he has an unmonumented strip of county land in his pasture. He hasn't felt any need to buy it since he's using it for free. That could be a problem some day.
The only good thing is that the abandoned railroad misses most of their property by a quarter mile, and where it does touch it just cuts off a sliver from the end to become the present road. Thank heaven for small favors. Her nephew did buy some small odd pieces that are carved up by the old RR, creeks, and former roads and not contiguous to any of the rest of the family land, a mess I wouldn't have touched.
I've just been hoping nobody rocks the boat. Will we someday wish we'd cleared it up sooner instead of later?
If ambiguity exists I would not use an adjustment process. They aren't changing anything just clearing it up...
Kinda supports the Utah Supreme Courts view that if you treat a object (like a fence) as a boundary for twenty years it becomes the boundary. So folks don't want to deal with the mess, they just accept the status qua. That's fine, after twenty years it becomes reality. I actually think this is the best way to treat these things. As a landowner you have a responsibility to look after YOUR boundaries. Should you neglect your duties, well, the fence (or other physical object) you treated and accepted as a boundary IS the boundary. Makes perfect common sense to me and the common law.
It's still a mess though and it's not all that good of an idea to go to court to resolve these things. In some ways I find common folks (lay people) can understand and accept this concept easier than the trained and educated (nerds so to say). So title folks, bureaucrats and many surveyors just don't go along. Then you get the adjoiners that just have issues with each other and so the math provides an opportunity.
So sometimes you can make simple repairs and other times there is nothing you can do. Common sense is not always an abundant commodity.
I understand what you are saying. A Utah statute from circa 2001 concerning boundary line agreements takes a boundary line agreement that just addresses ambiguities off the table. I don't like it and have tried to get it changed but no luck. A boundary line agreement in Utah takes the form of a quit claim deed. So call it what you like, it has a conveyance from grantor to grantee. It is a boundary line adjustment, so that's what I do.
