@mightymoe it sounds like you are confusing two differnt things. A BLM clososing corner is not a point on line. Its a corner set on a line that closes on a senior line without the benifit of a complete survey of the senior line. It was a shortcut form the contract error when the contractors were paid by original mile.
These were never ment to mark the senior line, and should not be interperet as the senior line (unless maybe both sides are private and they have adopted the CC as a corner).?ÿ
Points on line have always genrealy been accepted, although of?ÿ course there are always exceptions.
@mightymoe I guess you are missing my point, or, maybe I am not communicating it clearly.?ÿ When you are talking about junior monuments along the line being hundredths, a tenth or even 10' off line, how could one even begin to calcualate those offsets without holding the senior, originally called for and documented monuments?
There is also another comment in this thread where the poster stated that he is not a slave to math and will let title lines control over title lines, thus taking it upon himself to alter boundaries based on posession lines controlling over long established title lines. I'm surethat if something goes south and somebody institutes legal action over his determonations the first question posed to him when he is testifying in court will be asking him what qualifies him to practice law and determine the difference between title rights and ownership rights, or even better, what authority he has to modify a title line.
Showing monuments crossing can create a title issue, showing the line following the tiny errors and going through the monument would protect both parties.
I might be in the minority here, but when the error is below the threshold of measurement error (statistically speaking), I don't have a good reason to call it "off", and so it's not getting a distance call out. If it's definitely off and a junior monument I'm going to be very careful when deciding whether to hold it or not.
@JPH raised this point upthread. Should the mathemagical solution that the retracing (not original, it should be emphasized) surveyor of the junior parcel came up with override that straight line as soon as those monuments are slammed in half a foot or more off the established and monumented senior line? Do they alone constitute "occupation" and "possession" that would definitively ripen into unwritten rights?
I guess what I'm saying is that I might bend that line, but I need a better reason than "found a capped rod here" to automatically do so.
If the best available evidence leads me to believe that the off-line corners have been glommed onto for a couple of decades, then I'm putting an unsightly angle in the otherwise perfectly straight line.?ÿ I know how to lie with maps, I just don't care enough about long straight lines to want to do so.
Thanks for the response, I'm hoping to confirm my understanding of your point.
Say you are retracing parcel A, a square tract 400' to a side running cardinal directions, from a description written in the 1980's. An identical tract, Parcel B, adjoins to the north, it has been subdivided into 100' wide north/south lots in the mid 1990's. You recover and accept Parcel A corners. You also locate 3 on-line lot corners cut from Parcel B. One is 0.2' outside, the next is .04' inside, the next is >0.1' inside. The area is wooded and there is no evidence of occupation.
From my understanding, in your retracement of Parcel A, your retracement would 'kink' the line to follow the found lot corners, describing a line with 4 calls where it was previously described as one. Assume parcels A and B were created in a partition simultaneously. Would your resolution change if A was found to be senior to B?
I don't think it would matter if parcel A and B were created simultaneously in this example because the lot corners you are asking about were established further on down the line.?ÿ If there was a bust in the boundary of A or B back in 80's then the lot corners set in the 90's are automatically no good (ignoring potential occupation of course).
I think the only way I would kink the line to fit these monuments is because I found all of the monuments and that would let me do a record and measured drawing.?ÿ If I have to set anything I'm probably going to hold record and show the lot corners as simply being on-line because showing offsets of such small amounts is absurd, imo.
I might be in the minority here, but when the error is below the threshold of measurement error (statistically speaking), I don't have a good reason to call it "off", and so it's not getting a distance call out. If it's definitely off and a junior monument I'm going to be very careful when deciding whether to hold it or not.
Well, that and the simple rule of not being able to convey what you don't own.?ÿ How many millions of wedges would be floating around out there if junior monuments carried the same weight as senior?
@bstrand?ÿ
Calling them off is creating the wedges. You're clouding the title, which was sitting in repose.
The lawyer of one of my clients today is crafting a letter that uses the words slander of title.
Don't slander anyone's title without really, really good reasons.
Plus you now have a paper pincushion.
If you want to declare the monument off then fix it, get it out of the ground, contact the other surveyor and set one in the math position. If you call me with a monument in a rural wood setting telling me I'm 0.2' off on a 400 foot line I will laugh for a while and refuse to "fix" it. In fact I had a good chuckle with another surveyor 30 years ago over the same issue at a conference. I told him I had to fix his corner cause it was so off, he asked how far and I told him .2', he looked at me and we both broke out laughing, he called me a ba$$trD and we shared some beer and stories.
One corner, one monument, protect your client, the neighbor and the public.?ÿ
@chris-bouffard Establishment happens the moment the relevant fact pattern is met. No court (or surveyor) is required.
IMO, Discovering issues and pushing it to the courts falls well short of professional service. We are (or should be) uniquely qualified to recognize evidence and fact patterns, then assist the owners in conforming the record to conditions on the ground. If the owners head to court we have likely failed.
@mightymoe I guess you are missing my point, or, maybe I am not communicating it clearly.?ÿ When you are talking about junior monuments along the line being hundredths, a tenth or even 10' off line, how could one even begin to calcualate those offsets without holding the senior, originally called for and documented monuments?
There is also another comment in this thread where the poster stated that he is not a slave to math and will let title lines control over title lines, thus taking it upon himself to alter boundaries based on posession lines controlling over long established title lines. I'm surethat if something goes south and somebody institutes legal action over his determonations the first question posed to him when he is testifying in court will be asking him what qualifies him to practice law and determine the difference between title rights and ownership rights, or even better, what authority he has to modify a title line.
I think we have gotten in to this before, but if I had your adversion to "ptacticing law" I wouldnt have any work. What I and all the surveyors I have worked for, and work around do is give our clients and the public our opinion of where their boundary is. We don't put deed descriptions on the ground that don't represent our opinion of where their boundary is, and we don't call on attorneys unless we need to go (or threaten to go) to court.?ÿ
?ÿ
Well, if you mean boundary line agreements or adjustments then sure, of course.?ÿ I think @chris-bouffard was referring to the idea of doing that without consulting anyone.
@bstrand?ÿ
I'm sorry but why would the topic of this discussion merit bringing boundary line adjustments into it? Nothing is being adjusted and no title is changing in a retracement survey no matter if the retracement is bent or straight. Why do we insist on making this so difficult??ÿ
@bstrand?ÿ
I'm sorry but why would the topic of this discussion merit bringing boundary line adjustments into it?
You would probably have to read the previous couple pages of the thread to figure that out.
@bstrand I believe the point is that an agreement recognizing what has happened is often a valid solution. An adjustment is another animal and should not be used to document establishment.
OK, and the reason I brought it up was to simply list the various tools available to surveyors to help "conform the record to conditions on the ground".?ÿ Little did I know I almost derailed the thread, but fortunately... crisis averted! ????
I don't have a cookie cutter approach.?ÿ In your specific example, I'd likely show it as a straight line if the monuments were what I typically see, bent conduit pipe or #4 or #5 rebar.?ÿ If they were concrete monuments with aluminum caps and drill holes I'd likely kink it all since they've been there a generation.?ÿ Absent evidence of long acceptance of a given monument, I would hold senior title and tell my client they might want to send their neighbors a certified letter granting them permission, via a revocable license, to occupy and maintain the sliver of land that is threatened by AP/Color of Title.?ÿ?ÿ
I've not run into many situations where monuments were recently set near, but not on, the line.?ÿ In the few that I've encountered, I tied distance and bearing to a calculated point on my boundary and made a note saying that I did not survey the adjoiner's side lines and that the calculated point that I've tied the monument to is a point of convenience not my opinion of what the adjoiner owns.?ÿ
From my understanding, in your retracement of Parcel A, your retracement would 'kink' the line to follow the found lot corners, describing a line with 4 calls where it was previously described as one. Assume parcels A and B were created in a partition simultaneously. Would your resolution change if A was found to be senior to B?
The subdivisional survey of B divided the N line of A into 4 segments with each segment having the same bearing in the record no doubt. This is no different than first setting 40 acre corner monuments on line between two section corners. In order to retrace A thereafter the 40 acre corner monuments are used for the purpose they were set as being on line and the retracement simply shows Rec. as xxx, Measured as yyy. Line A being senior to B changes nothing and A's title is still what it always was. We never had this discussion before GPS and EDM were used. The fact that we can measure our mistakes more precisely than ever before doesn't change title.?ÿ
Most of us have no problem with original monuments control. What does an original monument at each end of a line signify? Where the line starts and where it ends. The monuments set on line later which are also original monuments signify where the line passes through on its way from the beginning to the end. It shouldn't be too hard to understand until the zoom button on CADD makes it look like a mile off line.?ÿ
What is gross error? The dictionary doesn't give a quantity. It says very obvious and unacceptable. Something very obvious and unacceptable to a typical person.?ÿ
A colleague once told me that he's happiest when he finds the corner monument.
That was years ago and it always stuck with me.
Why be happy when you find the corner if all it means is chaos?
Well, he didn't treat it like a problem, he treated finding the monument as a solution.?ÿ
I suppose there are two types of surveyors, happy to find monuments types like me and the monument makes a problem like others.?ÿ
This thread got me thinking about surveys sitting on my desk, each one has adjoiners with monumented corners. I'm accepting all the adjoining monuments, I'm not showing any of them "off".
Are some of them junior monuments on senior lines?
Yep!
Are they perfectly on-line?
Yep, they are cause I'm accepting them, more importantly the landowners have accepted them.?ÿ
?ÿ
From my understanding, in your retracement of Parcel A, your retracement would 'kink' the line to follow the found lot corners, describing a line with 4 calls where it was previously described as one. Assume parcels A and B were created in a partition simultaneously. Would your resolution change if A was found to be senior to B?
The subdivisional survey of B divided the N line of A into 4 segments with each segment having the same bearing in the record no doubt. This is no different than first setting 40 acre corner monuments on line between two section corners. In order to retrace A thereafter the 40 acre corner monuments are used for the purpose they were set as being on line and the retracement simply shows Rec. as xxx, Measured as yyy. Line A being senior to B changes nothing and A's title is still what it always was. We never had this discussion before GPS and EDM were used. The fact that we can measure our mistakes more precisely than ever before doesn't change title.?ÿ
Most of us have no problem with original monuments control. What does an original monument at each end of a line signify? Where the line starts and where it ends. The monuments set on line later which are also original monuments signify where the line passes through on its way from the beginning to the end. It shouldn't be too hard to understand until the zoom button on CADD makes it look like a mile off line.?ÿ
What is gross error? The dictionary doesn't give a quantity. It says very obvious and unacceptable. Something very obvious and unacceptable to a typical person. A monument that has served a purpose for a number of years without anyone other than a surveyor questioning it can hardly be said to have very obvious and unacceptable error.?ÿ
Are some of them junior monuments on senior lines?
Yep!
Are they perfectly on-line?
Yep, they are cause I'm accepting them, more importantly the landowners have accepted them.?ÿ
I follow you and agree, but this leads back to my original inquiry. In the hypothetical of the single called 400' line with 3 monumented (junior) lot corners.. You've found all monuments and have decided to accept them all. How do you annotate the 3 adjoining lot corners that you have accepted as 'on-line' but in fact are measured to be offset from the line you've drawn between the two controlling corners at distances ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 feet?
?ÿ
I don't do what you want.
I do this:
accepting the subdivision corners as defining the line even though the ranch to the south is owned by heirs of the patent holder. The subdivision is a late 1970's era.?ÿ
There isn't any offset to show. Why do that? This has been in repose all these years, there isn't another line to show.?ÿ