Are there any court cases that will help me explain this to my client who will lose 13?? of ground, or should I use the fence as evidence?
Perhaps you meant this as a figure of speech but there probably is more truth to it than not.?ÿ A surveyor is not authorized to survey a line that would cause anyone to lose ground. You are either retracing where the boundary was established or you are subdividing the quarter for the very first time.?ÿ Your job is to survey the established boundary. The boundary must be established else there would be no visible evidence of your client losing anything. The fact that you wrote this causes me to believe there must be evidence of an established boundary in your mind. The idea that the deed line is somewhere other than where the legal boundary lies is troubling. The courts don't update deeds when settling boundaries for a reason.?ÿ The boundary evidence is the deed line.?ÿ
Do you have pedigreed original section corners to work from in Iowa?
Is this issue from 100 years ago or 100 years in the future??ÿ Surveyors learn the math before they learn the law.
Have you discussed the fence location with both adjoiners?
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I only know what I'd do in my state, might not know much about yours.
some things to consider:
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- Is ANY part of the fence built to a monument? If so, then it is possibly a surveyed fence, considered by one or more landowners to be the true boundary.?ÿ
- Can you prove that the fence is merely a stock pen? Can you explain in legal, not in terms of math precision, why the existing fence does not constitute a legal, previously established property line??ÿ
- I just re-subdivided a 40 acre tract that I brokedown 20 years ago. Using the full power of my superior intellect I was graced with at the time, I set aliquot corners at various odds from the old fence lines, 5 feet to 20 feet. Unfortunately, I got dumber as I got older - and now I can't remember all my superior justifying logic used so long ago (e.g., great fingers and plenty of buttons), and my plat doesn't really explain it very well. In fact, I wake up in the middle of the night and bemoan the fact that I did that. So, today, I swear that If I can prove that a fence is not a boundary, or at least make a good theory, THEN I explain it on the plat so that future dummies like me can understand it in the future.?ÿ
People know what they own. . . .
You'd think...
But where we survey people bought land based on descriptions they could understand like: "thence from said stone set on the north margin of the road from Wilson's Mill, North 45 West, 60 perches, with a portion of the 23rd line of the grant known as "Snake Infested Thicket" to a post set near a Black Oak at the corner of the land granted from Jeb Snotcastle to his son Zeke." ?ÿ
Old possession is much more likely to memorialize the original survey of a description like that than one like: "the east 1/2 of the northwest 1/4" of a mythical square, being seven mythical squares north and 20 mythical squares East from an intersection of two baselines a layman will never see or comprehend, in some crazypants grid system thought up by a well intentioned, but seriously misguided Francophile from Virginia."
Old possession is much more likely to memorialize the original survey of a description like that than one like: "the east 1/2 of the northwest 1/4" of a mythical square, being seven mythical squares north and 20 mythical squares East from an intersection of two baselines a layman will never see or comprehend, in some crazypants grid system thought up by a well intentioned, but seriously misguided Francophile from Virginia."
I grew up in a farming community in the PLSS and had the impression that most rural landowners understood that system quite well enough to find a 40-acre parcel from the aliquot description, even if not the nuances of boundary law to settle the last few feet.?ÿ
There is an advertising-supported directory mailed every year or so to rural landowners in the county that shows who lives where and who owns each parcel over a few acres in size.?ÿ I expect much of the midwest has a similar directory.
