Like talking to people, maybe the oldest people with knowledge. I've had 80 plus year old folks tell me a fence has been in place all their lives since they were children. Sure it's been repaired maybe rebuilt but that makes it a ancient fence if legally 30 years is the definition. In Utah boundary acquiescence happens at 20 years. Both landowners treat a fence as the boundary line for twenty years and it can be the line, even if original monuments exist. The Doctrine of Repose kicks in somewhere around 50 years. Repose kicks in because nobody knows how it got there it's just always been there so the courts tend to just accept it as so and not disturb it. You'd think a surveyor would think twice before saying a 100 plus year old road is in the wrong place by 50-100 feet but I've seen them do it, heck the whole town was off, they built it in the wrong place from day one.
You can carbon date a fence if you like, testimony might be easier, or old aerial photos. I shouldn't just be a surveyors opinion after looking at the fence.
> "Ancient" is an actual legal term in many jurisdictions ...
But not widely used in others.
Yeah, Texas and Utah are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Imagine that!
I haven't found a doctrine of repose in California Common Law, e.g. It's been so many decades so leave it alone.
We don't have long term acquiescence.
I have found one old case of boundary by estoppel (near the famous HOLLYWOOD sign) wherein a property owner represented to the buyer of an adjoining property that a fence is the boundary. The buyer relied on that statement in his offer and the Court upheld the fence where it existed.
Most of the published boundary cases are either affirming on the facts (usually stated very vaguely) or they are Agreed Boundary Doctrine cases (most fail). After the Courts stopped publishing every opinion from the intermediate appellate level in the 1960s almost all fact appeals are not published and most affirm the trial court judgment.
If a party stipulates to the other side's survey with the idea of claiming the agreed boundary doctrine at a different line then it almost certainly won't work. But if the party can put on their own expert that actually testifies to the boundary location in a well reasoned manner giving the court two fact sets to choose from and the court accepts the expert's opinion then almost certainly it will be affirmed on appeal. This is because Appellate Courts defer to the trial court on findings of fact as long as the finding is supported by substantial evidence. It doesn't matter if there is conflicting evidence supporting another finding, the trial courts have the discretion to resolve conflicts in the evidence.
> Yeah, Texas and Utah are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Yes, there have been surveyors in Texas since before the 1830's, whereas in Utah land owners have apparently had to do the best they can without surveyors.
I suppose it sucks when every ancient thing says the boundary was here and always has been but there is no direct survey record or existing ancient markers so you resurvey from shiny new section corners and move everything to the new resurvey.
Different law in the various states. Deal with it. Apparently in Texas if you were granted 100 acres and it was surveyed and a modern survey reveals over 100 acres in the grant the State of Texas stills owns the overage. That's their law. I don't know whether they will refund for shortages in acreage. It's Texas, I don't want to or need to know.
Each of us must deal with the facts and reality where we live. It's not my fault what was done in the past. You should consider yourself fortunate you don't need to deal with 150 years of blank survey records and minimal monuments since the original survey where multiple subdivision and development has occurred. Resurveying from a resurvey and trying to make everything how it should have been doesn't work, it's just chaos. It's requires more than proving the original survey, which you can't always do. My offer to have you come and help on a few surveys in the abyss still stands Kent. If you have the answers I'd gladly adopt them.
You put out lots of suggestions about how to improve the survey plat I posted, I've noted them. Maybe it's blizzard of text but I'd like to know where you would have determined the boundaries to be. Hey the descriptions are there and the "ancient" fences and roads are shown. I give you more narrative than was needed. I'll send you the line work from the drawing if you want, along with every survey shot I took in the section over the last 15 years.
What would also be interesting is where the new parcel should be located, new deed un surveyed less than 30 days old. Would that just be independent and staked in space or does it need to fit into the "ancient" fabric on the ground.
> You put out lots of suggestions about how to improve the survey plat I posted, I've noted them. Maybe it's blizzard of text but I'd like to know where you would have determined the boundaries to be.
If you'd like for posters to this forum to offer you some suggestions on how to do boundary surveys, why didn't you say so? Just post the copies of the conveyances by which the section was subdivided down to those that created the boundaries in question and I'll bet you'll get lots of helpful tips.
The ancient thing may prevail but it has to be presented as a fact possibility.
Here we have 1) a sectional subdivision redone for the umpteenth time or 2) an ancient fence which is the best evidence of the boundary. If the trial court finds that the ancient fence is the aliquot line then that is almost unassailable on appeal.
Unfortunately what we had in one recent published case is an expert on the anti-resubdivide it side who apparently just sat dumb in the witness chair and said he could survey it if called upon to do that. A significant percentage of surveyors can only conceive of subdividing per chapter 3, it doesn't occur to them that the section may already be subdivided and if the possibility isn't at least presented to the court then it has no chance.
Beings I survey in PLSSia I am tempted to call a fence ancient if I set a corner using it. I reserve this for 1/4 corners and section corners. If the BLM mentions ancient fences I assume any fence built around the time of patent would qualify as ancient since it represents the corner according to my BLM manual.
On a more personal level: anything I can remember or happened during my lifetime is not ancient and never will be. I get a little testy about the old thing as well.
Steve
I wouldn't waste any more time trying to reason with someone who earlier highjacked your original thread for no other purpose than self promotion. There was nothing wrong with your survey. It's up to you to present it to the world as you wish as long as it meets state standards and it can be retraced. To him, it was not a thread about how frustrating it can be to perform a competent survey and the have it ignored in a conveyance, it was about how utterly incompetent your survey was for reasons that have no bearing on it's competence. Period.
His recent post is just another screed, this time implying that the people of Utah have had to exist without surveyors. I didn't see a little smiley face after the sentence so it's too late now for him to back off and call it a joke. He just called you a non-surveyor if you didn't quite get it. Childish, snarky, and unprofessional, and entirely unacceptable on this board. If I ever see similar comments from the same source about Ohio surveyors or myself I will report it to his state board the next morning for professional misconduct.
And now you have some smarmy advice to "help" you learn how to survey in Utah when you are demonstrably competent to perform your work. How helpful.
He feeds on this kind of stuff and like any of that sort he will ramp it up and feed on it until someone stands up to him. Who will it be?
So the record, the paper is supreme. We must start from the beginning and resurvey the whole thing, make it how it should have been. That's going to be hard, all four quarter corners will need to be found or be re established, two are in fields where the ownership is not divided by the section line, it's been cultivated but they could still be there. The west side of the section is a resurvey by the GLO that didn't locate the original corners, so all the corners of the section are not from the same survey. So the record will just get you down to the descriptions shown on my survey. The math pretty much fits, there isn't any monuments on the ground or in the descriptions, there is just the "ancient" physical stuff on the landscape. That's all you get, sorry the record, junior senior rights, original surveys of the individual parcels, all that stuff isn't going to do you much good, most doesn't even exist.
Get your butt up here and I'll supply you everything you ask for, if it exists. I'm sure you'd really enjoy a trip through our deed records. The title is all in place from day one. Where the location of the title is, not going to find it in the court house other than the deeds I've given. The record will just mathematically get you down to there. Besides, Utah law is pretty clear, after treating a some physical thing as a boundary for twenty years it's hard to claim otherwise. We got at least four times that period here. I actually believe it was surveyed but it can't be proved from any record. That's where the "ancient" thing takes effect.
OK Carl, I need to get some other work done anyway.
> So the record, the paper is supreme. We must start from the beginning and resurvey the whole thing, make it how it should have been.
No, obviously you'll benefit quite a bit from the advice that posters will be able to give you on how to resurvey old boundaries. Step one is abstracting. Without a knowledge of the history of conveyances that created the boundaries of the parcels, you're just guessing.
The initial point for the Salt Lake Meridian is in Salt Lake City Kent. Want to start there with your resurvey?
Prior to the mandate that required the surveyor to note what was set vs. what was found, the local custom around my area had surveyors calling all corners the found, old. So, if I ran across this
THENCE East, with the South line of Jones and the North line of Smith, 150.00 feet to an old 1/2" steel rod for corner.
THENCE South, with an interior line of Jones and the East line of Smith, 150.00 feet to a 3/8" steel rod for corner.
The 1/2" was found and the 3/8" was set.
Past that, I believe there term "ancient" was codified at sometime as anything 30 years or older, but I can't remember why I know that or even where to go look.
ancient history?
Well, I'd say you have to recognize the old or "ancient" history of the relationship between our two protagonists, here, Carl Z.
Whenever they engage, the jabs are sharp, but are usually taken as well as given. I'd say they both held up that end of the bargain in these posts.
30 years!!????
LISTEN BUB, I AM NOT ANCIENT!! 😉 (my wife and kids may think so, but I don't.)
Egyption artifacts are "ancient", 30 year old rods are "old". Down here, we do not even refer to Civil War artifacts as "ancient". I have a coprolite on my desk that is definitely "ancient".
But then legal interpretations have always been screwey.:-O
> The initial point for the Salt Lake Meridian is in Salt Lake City Kent. Want to start there with your resurvey?
Leon, I'm sure that you've obtained maps and field notes of the townships in which your town is situated and those adjoining. I would think you'd know to do that, right? That's easy. Now proceed to the abstracting.
Yeah, I've did all that. The boundaries are established, have been for a long time. You can do all the research and reconstruction of the record you like. In the end it comes down to whether the boundaries are established by the landowners or not. It's way past time for some surveyor to evaluate whether the paper should be resurveyed on the ground, put everything how it should have been (in your view only). Surveyors are not even authorized to do resurveys, you'd need to get all the landowners to authorize that. You can retrace, so the evidence available was presented on the survey. Plenty of surveyors like you just reject the physical evidence, owner history and blow off the "ancient" legal definition, make fun (or are ignorant) of Utah boundary law, the whole nine yards. You either have the record paper GIS without monuments you can abstract and resurvey, or you have the "ancient" physical evidence on the landscape, what has been done and respected for many decades or more than a century. Which do you think these landowners believe in, what has been or what wasn't done? Most of them just want things left alone how they've always been, in their view these boundaries are long established.
