The courts have continuously ruled that a property line runs to the center of a monument. Whether that monument be a wall, a rebar, a fence, a pipe or any other number of monuments that purport to represent a property corner. The line has no width. If it did, surveyors would sure find a way to represent both sides of that line.
0.04' 😉
How wide is a wood stake? :):-/ :-$ :bye: :excruciating:
I hate those cut/pastes from the old site. They could have at least maintained the paragraphs! How many bytes can a hard return use up? I regularly use paragraphs in my writing so, please don't judge me from the above quotation. Besides, it's really out of context with this particular question: "How wide is a Property Line?"
I can't really find the term, Property Line, defined anywhere in the legal dictionaries. All of the definitions direct you to the term, "Boundary," which is defined as the furthest extent of two contiguous estates. "Property" is either real or personal; we're pretty much in the business of real property boundaries. "Line" is a mathematical concept which really has nothing to do with boundary law. The courts have long recognized the fact that man's imperfection prohibits any determination of a perfect line which, by mathematical definition, would be the intersection of two planes limited by two finite points of terminus. Yes, the mathematical concept of a line has no width and is limited to the shortest distance between two points which have no dimension. Again, however, the mathematical concept of a line has nothing to do with land boundary law.
>“Boundary – Every separation, natural or artificial, which marks the confines or line of division of two contiguous estates. (Bouvier & Rawle, 1914, p. 384)
>“Boundary – A line or object indicating the limit or furthest extent of a tract of land or territory. A separating or dividing line between countries, states, districts of territory, or tracts of land; consisting sometimes wholly of one or more natural objects, as a river, a chain of lakes, etc.; sometimes artificial erections, as a stone wall, fence, and the like; sometimes of imaginary line drawn from one principal terminus to another, and indicated along its course by prominent natural or artificial objects standing or erected upon it at intervals; and sometimes of all these in combination.” (Burrill, 1870, p. 221)
A "boundary" is a physical object (once it has been established) and it's always been legally described by its physical properties. If the boundary has been created (by conveyance of a portion of an estate to another), but not yet established on the ground, then the boundary does exist in concept and the terms of the agreement which created it will provide the instructions to be followed in good faith when the location of the boundary is established by the actions of the landowners which result in a physical demarcation of the boundary. Yes, boundaries have physical characteristics and physical properties (which have width).
I don't survey Property Lines. I survey Boundaries.
JBS
PS. Six years of study will change a persons opinions (Although my opinions of the new diatribe referred to above hasn't changed).
A line has zero width. But after all measurements and monumentation, there remains an uncertainty in its position, however large or small that uncertainty may be.
When I used a Pen Plotter, all Boundary Lines were 0.7 mm wide, on the plat. On the ground they have a width of 0.000 mm.
How wide is a Property Line? Easy answer
0.04'
😛
How wide is a Property Line? Easy answer
If a property line had width, then it would also have "area" defined by its length and width. Who would hold title to that land within the square footage of the property line regardless how narrow it is. Just another piece of land to fight over.
Place your hands together so the palms touch. You can clearly see the dividing line that separates each hand. It has no width. You don't need to hold them 0.1 ft. apart to be able to tell which hand is which. That is my analogy.
> Perhaps the width of a property line could be considered to be the same width as the monuments which mark its ends.
So what happens when the line on one end is monumented by the Mississippi River? Or the Atlantic Ocean?
Yes, Euclid. You can go through the theorems and there will be something on the lack of width of a line.
Of course, if you go through simple dimensional construction, the width and height of a line is nothing, the only dimension is it's length. For a simple story on this, see Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott.
On the converse, my former employer always wanted to widen the boundary lines to an equivalent of the quality of the location. When there is an extremely ambiguous set of record data and awful monumentation, the line would be very thick. When everything works, you would draw the line thinner and thinner. The ultimate answer would be 0.00' wide.
How wide is a Property Line? Easy answer
but as Target and I are saying, if it was 0.04' then we would all be agreeing with each other.:-|
A line is the intersection of 2 planes. However, property boundaries are not lines. They are planes. Where those planes inteserct the earth's surface is where ownership is visualized. So, therefor property corners are actually the intersection of 2 vertical planes, which produces a vertical line. Not a point as many would believe.
As such, from now on, my deed descriptions will be written as:
Beginning at the vertical line which passes through the east 1/4 of section xx, TyyN, RzzE, thence along the vertical plane, its horizontal axis oriented in the N20-33-43W direction, a horizontal distance of 333 feet to a vertical line; thence.....
or, maybe not.
A property line get wider as the parcel gets larger. By the time the parcel gets to 50 acres, there is room enough to chop a traverse line down it.
> > Was there an explanation of this 1/8" wide line? Where did they come up with that bull? A line, by definition, has no width.
>
> Where did you get that from?
>
Unabridged dictionary states:
2. Math. a continuous extent of length, straight or curved, without breadth or thickness; the trace of a moving point.
🙂 😛 😀 😉
Good one, Clear.
JBS
I call that "functional precision."
The property owners are operating to 1 or 2 feet (wandering fence, cut timber, who mows what, who weeds what, and so on).
Meanwhile the Surveyors come through working to 1 or 2 hundredths.
Actualy, since we are dealing with parcels of an oblate spheroid (the Earth's surface), they are not flat planes.
Can the intersection of two curved planes produce a straight line?
Perhaps it can but only when not viewed from the side. Any "side view" and the line would actually have an arc to it and thus not truly straight.
Oh, wow, man.....don't bogart that joint, pass it over to me....
I was first going to say that one of the two "planes" was straight; the vertical plan going perpendicular to the earth's surface to the mass center of the earth. But now that you mention it, the vertical "plane" would follow the plumb line(s) which would curve with the directional gravitational pull. This would change direction as you encountered different concentrations of mass. So it is not based on a mathematical oblate spheroid per se, but on the geoid which is based on that plumb-line going up and down which would also change direction as you followed the line bearing. Then, of course as you travel up or down hills, the distances are reduced to "horizontal" but at different elevations that would vary based on elevation due to the the vertical change in elevation. So your distance can be different if you reduce to horizontal at the higher elevation than at the lower elevation.
I'm not really sure you can truely described the property.....maybe if you called to monuments....
OK here goes.
Brown or not, someone wrote the book.
If it is so wrong, then someone else should write another book instead of just whining about it ;-).
What ever your line type or pen style is..or..scaled from an existing map..