Pray tell, what am I misunderstanding?
And please be specific.
I was. Why do you want me to repeat it?
Be specific.
I dont get the feeling that YOU have any interest in learning, but in case someone finds this that does:
This:
Lot 1, Block 5 Plat of Jimbo
Is better than this (assuming the same level of care is taken):
Thence
Thence
Thence
Thence
Thence
And along dmyhill's train of thought, don't let the title companies change the lot 5 block 4 description to a thence thence thence description even when they squeal that they must have a metes and bounds description.
Local Planning Dept wants a M&B description on all subdivision plats. If the parent parcel is described as an aliquot division or as a lot of some previous subdivision plat, I refuse to do it. I think I'm the first and continue to be the only (or one of very few) surveyor to refuse. Lots of turnover in the local Planning Dept, so I need to re-educate a new planner once a year or so.
For the same reason I refuse to change a description from a simple aliquot or lot designation to a M&B, I won't change an existing description of a parcel I'm representing on a record of survey: Changing the description potentially changes the intent of the original parties to the conveyance. Also, if not done with the formal agreement of adjoining landowners, being a new description, it will potentially be junior to any conflicting descriptions regardless of any senior/junior relationship existing prior to changing the description.
The boundary I survey and depict on my map is, as mulambda said, my interpretation of the intent of the parties who created the description. Hopefully my measurements are as good or better than any other surveyor's under the same or similar conditions. Even so, they won't be precisely the same. And in 10 or 20 years, technology will be such that much more reliable measurements can be made under the most difficult conditions. I don't want some engineer-minded mathmagician coming through that 10 or 20 years later deciding that I measured wrong and setting a new iron a couple or a few tenths from mine.
There is also the possibility, however slight that a subsequent surveyor might find evidence that I missed or wasn't available to me, changing the best interpretation of the description to something else. With my new description now in the title chain, I will have created a problem for someone else to solve rather than making things clearer.
However, if the landowners on each side of one or all lines of my survey have convoluted descriptions and can agree on the results of my survey, I'm happy to help facilitate Boundary Line Agreements with descriptions based on my survey. That's solving a problem with little to no risk of inadvertently creating one.
Local Planning Dept wants a M&B description on all subdivision plats.
I was asked to provide a legal description for each lot on a plat once...
Lot 1 Description
Lot 1 of Plat
Lot 2 Description
Lot 2 of Plat
rinse/repeat
20 years pass. Seven different surveyors have either surveyed the original tract or its abutters. The latest survey plat shows multiple bearings and distances on all sides of the tract, with the most recent being used to write a new description for the tract.
And we wonder why the general public view us as fools who can never agree about anything.
Title people demanding a M&B description for a subdivision Lot:
Tell us you just got this job and don't know anything without telling us.
"I was asked to provide a legal description for each lot on a plat once…
Lot 1 Description
Lot 1 of Plat
Lot 2 Description
Lot 2 of Plat
rinse/repeat"
I like that.
What he said.