Utah Legislature house floor debate - their view of surveyors.
The mess of boundaries, agreements and quit claim deeds
And a Boundary Line Agreement in Utah is a conveyance process with grantors in the form of a quit claim deed. There is not two process as the legislature says but one quit claim processes with two names.
Then much of he problem with surveys as perceived by the legislature is any variance from a stakeout of the Record Title is frowned upon. It's just two damn bad that the earth isn't a perfect square cube and there are mistakes in the record, blamed on surveyors that didn't write it all although surveyors have contributed their share too the mess.
Most of this problem would vanish if established boundaries were recognized and respected, mapped properly into the GIS and the title industry and counties would accept the reality and not force the continual re conveyance by quit claim deeds to resolve what is not a problem unless you insist that record title and the boundary location be in perfect mathematical alignment. If only people would learn the common law and simply apply what the wisdom of the courts have given us!
well, the gentleman speaking is no great orator, nor does he really understand the issues... but I see it as a step in the right direction.
the bearer of bad news is usually blamed, be it a Doctor, Lawyer, or Indian Chief (or surveyor)
Yes, getting rid of the requirement for a land use application via P&Z is a good thing, let's let landowners resolve their boundary locations without all that. Ignorance of common law is another thing and legislating the common law out of boundary line agreements just makes another worse sort of mess.
If boundary line establishment was accepted as not being a conveyance of title (as defined by the Utah courts) then a boundary line agreement recognizing the boundary location of the establishment wouldn't be a conveyance of title which trips the need to make a land use application. So they are trying to fix the issue by a Rube-Goldberg back door approach. No way is the title industry going to let go of the hold by the throat they have to extract money from landowners whenever they need to sell or transfer their property and need the boundary defined. Got to have them quit claim deeds to eliminate the chance of paying a claim. Fact is landowners are being denied their right to domain over THEIR boundaries and Utah common law IS NOT going to be allowed to get in the way.
Isn't it convenient that the blame can be put on surveyors. Maybe surveyors are part of the problem because they have talked themselves out of using the common law in their practices. But what are you going to do when the perfect cube of record title is actually a undulating round and non square world. If only the landowners rights to ESTABLISH their common boundaries was recognized by all and common sense (and law) prevailed. Wouldn't be a perfect world but sure would be a lot simpler. After all who owns the land?
