The longtimers around this board and its predecessors will remember debates with Richard Schaut. I really miss him sometimes.
And what if the subdivider of the 1ac lot subdivided 10, 1ac lots simultaneously out of a 10 acre parcel in 1890 later proven to contain 9 acres total. Who gets what? According to your argument all 1ac lots get 1ac.
No I did not say that, I said you either layout on the ground the 10 acre lot or 10 1-acre lots OR you change the deed description to reflect 10 lots 0.90 acre each.
FrancisH, post: 396244, member: 10211 wrote: So now do your job as a surveyor that you were paid to do in the first place.
I cannot comment on how long the records go back in Singapore. But here in VA the first land grants date back to 1606.
Survey that by deed and then tell me that mm measurments define the property.
Can surveyors in Singapore change deed descriptions with out anyone else's consent?
FrancisH, post: 396246, member: 10211 wrote: No I did not say that, I said you either layout on the ground the 10 acre lot or 10 1-acre lots OR you change the deed description to reflect 10 lots 0.90 acre each.
Our job is not to redefine every survey done by our predecessors. Only determine the property owned by our client.
Whether a deed erroneously defines it as a 1ac lot and it is actually 0.90 ac is what we determine. If the owner would like to update their title that is their decision. Not the surveyor.
Ron Lang, post: 396249, member: 6445 wrote: Our job is not to redefine every survey done by our predecessors. Only determine the property owned by our client.
Whether a deed erroneously defines it as a 1ac lot and it is actually 0.90 ac is what we determine. If the owner would like to update their title that is their decision. Not the surveyor.
In short at least here in Va, many deeds were written by attorneys, without the benefit of surveys. And are merely bounded by deeds reciting a specific acreage. That's just the way it was done years ago. And in order to survey those parcels one has to establish the out lying parcels and with our years of training and education we surveyors give our best opinion as to where the property lies and the dimensions there of.
It is then up to the owner of the property to update the title thereof. If that is not done then 20 years from now the same problem will arise.
But to say we as US surveyors are not performing our jobs, because we don't update the title is mis-characterization of our duties as surveyors.
But to say we as US surveyors are not performing our jobs, because we don't update the title is mis-characterization of our duties as surveyors.
you either do one of the following:
layout correct monument positions based on his deed description or tell him your deed is wrong so you use my survey to change it to reflect correct lines and area.
but when someone hires you to do a boundary survey, tell me what exactly do you do?
you go around the fences and look for monuments right? you measure those monuments' position using your mm TS/GPS right?
you dig up deed description of your client's lot right? it says in there somewhere that line 1-2 is 100 ft and has an area of 1 acre right?
you computed your survey points and found out area = 0.90 acres right?
what do you do? honestly?
do you tell them - "hey, your monuments are were they are as it was laid out 200 years ago! can't move them, sorry, that's against court statutes, I know it's wrong but hey that's the law around here. by the way, your 2 monuments measure 99.50 when it should be 100 and your area is 0.90 acre when it should be 1 acre but hey I can't do anything about it."
question is why don't you move the monuments so that it reflects what is written on the deed?
FrancisH, post: 396253, member: 10211 wrote: you either do one of the following:
layout correct monument positions based on his deed description or tell him your deed is wrong so you use my survey to change it to reflect correct lines and area.
but when someone hires you to do a boundary survey, tell me what exactly do you do?
you go around the fences and look for monuments right? you measure those monuments' position using your mm TS/GPS right?
you dig up deed description of your client's lot right? it says in there somewhere that line 1-2 is 100 ft and has an area of 1 acre right?
you computed your survey points and found out area = 0.90 acres right?what do you do? honestly?
do you tell them - "hey, your monuments are were they are as it was laid out 200 years ago! can't move them, sorry, that's against court statutes, I know it's wrong but hey that's the law around here. by the way, your 2 monuments measure 99.50 when it should be 100 and your area is 0.90 acre when it should be 1 acre but hey I can't do anything about it."question is why don't you move the monuments so that it reflects what is written on the deed?
Exactly what you do if they are original monuments and concur with the evidence of the adjoiners.
What you don't do is disagree with 200 years of evidence and set new corners and tell your client that the neighbors house is 0.30' over the property line. That would be as Mike Tyson would say "ludicrous".
If your grandpa bought a quart of milk, but the jar was not filled all the way, But, be bought it in 1965, and willed it to you. And, you came along and MEASURED the quart of milk, and it only had 30 oz in it, where would you get the other 2 ounces? The "quart of milk" was land. And, the corners were all "ERRONEOUSLY set, in 1952, 13 yrs before he bought it. They all showed him the corners. He saw them in 1965. Your grandpa showed the corners to you. Tall buildings were erected on the ADJOINERS, and on your land. WHAT direction do we go, to get that extra land? North, South, East or West?
WHERE do we go from here? Do we go tear the buildings down, and set new corners?
We get alot of our law, from BRITISH COMMON LAW.
British Common Law, got it's roots from the King James Bible.
The King James Bible has an injunction, that says "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbors landmark" (Deuteronomy 27:17)
It does not say that the numbers hold, but that the MONUMENTS hold.
American History has a history of reverence for the King James Bible, and much of our law stems from it. Historic fact.
Nate
And, you came along and MEASURED the quart of milk, and it only had 30 oz in it, where would you get the other 2 ounces?
if a farmer told me that I only had 30 oz even if my grandfather told me he willed me 32 ounces then I could find a cake recipe that only uses 30 ounces instead of 32 ounces of milk . so when I sell my cake I will only charge $2 for it instead of $3 because I know my milk lacks 2 ounces.
Yeah right...lol
FrancisH, post: 396258, member: 10211 wrote: if a farmer told me that I only had 30 oz even if my grandfather told me he willed me 32 ounces then I could find a cake recipe that only uses 30 ounces instead of 32 ounces of milk . so when I sell my cake I will only charge $2 for it instead of $3 because I know my milk lacks 2 ounces.
Then what does your selling for 2 have to do with the farmer or the grandfather?
FrancisH, post: 396243, member: 10211 wrote: It's not a regional thing, a 1 meter in Singapore should be 1 meter in the US (or 3.28084 ft).
Actually, it is a regional thing. 1 meter where I'm at is 3.28083333333 ft. 🙂
Ron Lang, post: 396264, member: 6445 wrote: Then what does your selling for 2 have to do with the farmer or the grandfather?
You've made the point it's up.to the owner...
[USER=10211]@FrancisH[/USER]
I surveyed an area that all the original Headright Grants called to be from a "File" that was a square with each side equaling 3,600 varas or 10,000 feet.
After my survey I found each boundary to be closer to 3,900 varas long or 10,800+ feet.
The total of the individual tracts as deeded acreage adds up to 400å± acres more than granted in one of the Headrights.
All the original descriptions of the Headrights have calls to join the adjacent Headrights with no gaps.
The chain bearers simply measured each boundary of the original "file" 300 varas too long.
That is the biggest example of descriptions with errors that I can think of.
It's the difference in legal systems. Common law only ever existed in some countries. Most nations skipped from tribal law to an amalgam of civil and commercial and maritime law without the complications of British Common Law or Saxon vow and oath.
Merchants and attorneys worldwide have been working for centuries to remove The People's knowledge of and access to the Common Law.
Starting with the Norman Invasion and continuing with Lord Mansfield's incorporation of the Lex Mercatoria into British Common Law in The 1700s. Single cause of action. Changes in citizenship and jurisdiction like the 14th amendment and cases like Erie Railroad Co. Vs. Tompkins have blurred who has common law rights and when and where they apply yet we still have them here. When they are completely made obsolete we will all be "surveying" as the deed staking engineering layout expert measuring task FrancisH describes. Until then what makes a surveyor here is knowing which common law boundary principles apply in a given situation and using measurements as a tiny part of that overall analysis. The office of the description is to help find the physical monument. If it lands you ten feet or three meters away and you find the monument it was good enough. In the common law what you own is established between yourself and your adjoiners and is nobody else's business. Same reason we have non-recording states.
half bubble, post: 396293, member: 175 wrote: It's the difference in legal systems. Common law only ever existed in some countries. Most nations skipped from tribal law to an amalgam of civil and commercial and maritime law without the complications of British Common Law or Saxon vow and oath.
Merchants and attorneys worldwide have been working for centuries to remove The People's knowledge of and access to the Common Law.
Starting with the Norman Invasion and continuing with Lord Mansfield's incorporation of the Lex Mercatoria into British Common Law in The 1700s. Single cause of action. Changes in citizenship and jurisdiction like the 14th amendment and cases like Erie Railroad Co. Vs. Tompkins have blurred who has common law rights and when and where they apply yet we still have them here. When they are completely made obsolete we will all be "surveying" as the deed staking engineering layout expert measuring task FrancisH describes. Until then what makes a surveyor here is knowing which common law boundary principles apply in a given situation and using measurements as a tiny part of that overall analysis. The office of the description is to help find the physical monument. If it lands you ten feet or three meters away and you find the monument it was good enough. In the common law what you own is established between yourself and your adjoiners and is nobody else's business. Same reason we have non-recording states.
Interestingly enough, Singapore had common law stemming from English colonial rule, and lands recorded under laws of 1874 or thereabouts. Those boundaries were handled similarly as we would in this country while Singapore was transitioning to a modernized system that seems to have been completed in the 1990's. So a Singapore surveyor who did not perform work before then, has probably never been exposed to the older methods of determining land boundaries. This from 15 minutes of internet research, so could be wrong. Frances has a valid point that things should be updated and modernized. But the local government authorities in charge in most areas of the U. S. simply don't have the resources to pay for it, nor the authority (or maybe political will) to mandate the extra work/fees required from individual landowners in their contracts with private surveyors. It's notable that part of the Singapore program implemented very specific requirements/training in order to perform surveys there, so everyone is working to the same standards. In the U.S. we have a real hodgepodge of differing requirements and resulting differing opinions (much of this attributable to local history and laws). Again, scope and depth of modernization in U.S. is incomparable. It's good to be proud of something good your country has accomplished (more stable land boundaries). But the surveyors in Singapore didn't do it, and neither can the surveyors of the U.S..
Maybe the attached pdf will help.
roger_LS, post: 396201, member: 11550 wrote: No one said they should be preparing legals but they are insuring the description. You see jurisdictions sometimes requesting that a new single legal description must be prepared for a parcel currently described in three parts, but the current descriptions are absolutely fine! They see it as simplifying the world but really you're potentially introducing problems by re-writing that which has long existed. No thanks!
They are insuring title. THE legal description cannot be "corrected". The legal description is the description written when the parcel was first conveyed out of a larger parcel or piece of land. It's written, recorded, and can't be changed.
Your survey is your opinion of where the property falls on the ground. You should sketch it up and show what the original calls were, and what you found (including any supporting or conflicting evidence). But still it's your interpretation of the location.
If someone uses your written narrative of where the property lines are in a future conveyance, that's on them. That becomes a legal description, but the original for that property is still unchanged. If the new deed describes an incorrect position due to a poor retracement survey that could cause problems such as transferring some property that was not owned by the grantor.
That's my opinion.
Duane Frymire, post: 396305, member: 110 wrote: Interestingly enough, Singapore had common law stemming from English colonial rule, and lands recorded under laws of 1874 or thereabouts. Those boundaries were handled similarly as we would in this country while Singapore was transitioning to a modernized system that seems to have been completed in the 1990's. So a Singapore surveyor who did not perform work before then, has probably never been exposed to the older methods of determining land boundaries. This from 15 minutes of internet research, so could be wrong. Frances has a valid point that things should be updated and modernized. But the local government authorities in charge in most areas of the U. S. simply don't have the resources to pay for it, nor the authority (or maybe political will) to mandate the extra work/fees required from individual landowners in their contracts with private surveyors. It's notable that part of the Singapore program implemented very specific requirements/training in order to perform surveys there, so everyone is working to the same standards. In the U.S. we have a real hodgepodge of differing requirements and resulting differing opinions (much of this attributable to local history and laws). Again, scope and depth of modernization in U.S. is incomparable. It's good to be proud of something good your country has accomplished (more stable land boundaries). But the surveyors in Singapore didn't do it, and neither can the surveyors of the U.S..
Personally, I think the rectangular system sucks. I'd prefer someone come in and replace them with metes and bounds...of course this will never happen. Someone thought it would be so friggin' cool if all these properties were related to an initial point then laid out in these neat little squares. In reality it can be a hallacious burden for the guy who's now got a small little parcel described by aliquot parts where his property has never been established or the section has not been broken down. Maybe I'm just jealous, I'd love to work on them more, but in this steep mountainous and forested area around here the survey costs become so prohibitive that most can't afford a proper survey.
