Metes and bounds subdivision

I attended the local planning commission meeting last night in order to keep informed on the recent 'agricultural use' issue I posted about a while back. Finally, the planning chair stated exactly what the statutes and recent case law says. Hopefully that one has been put fully to bed.

While at the meeting another interesting issue came up -

A fellow was there to discuss what would be required of him in order to sell tracts of property he owns. I am vaguely familiar with the project as a colleague, who may do the work, spoke to me briefly about it.

From what I gather, back in the 1970's -prior to our county subdivision regulations (enacted 1999), a local surveyor of pretty good reputation divided a property into several 5 acre tracts and provided the client with a plat of the subdivision as well as metes and bounds descriptions of the tracts.

Over time one fellow ended up buying all 45 acres (9 tracts) of the property. The current owner was at the meeting and was not sure if his current deed was for the individual tracts or a 'combined' description.

Here are the issues that came up:

1. The planning commission is stymieing his filing of the ancient document (plat). My opinion is that they are on shaky ground blocking the filing of the document as it pre-dates the subdivision regulations.

2. If his current deed describes a combination of all the tracts, does that eliminate the prior divisions? I am not sure that it automatically does.

3. If his current deed describes the individual tracts of ground as separate parcels within the deed, the filing of the ancient plat is simply providing additional reference for the metes and bounds descriptions and would certainly be better filed than lost.

I'll be interested to see how this one turns out.