While there are no bad reasons not to do proper research, here is a prime reason to research back in time for not only your property, but the adjoiners.
My property is senior to the adjoiner by 25 years and has not been surveyed in 60 years. My deed in one area that deals with a creek has metes across this creek with calls to some natural monuments. It was not easy, but I found enough of these calls to feel comfortable.
The adjoining property has been surveyed 3 times in the last 25 years and the most recent was 8 years ago and all of these 3 call to be along my line, but these 3 actually follow a fence line that is built above the creek on a bluff maybe 500' away.
Go back one more deed (1942) on this adjoining property and presto, this description matches my description almost identical along our common line.
It appears that this fence on the bluff was built out of convenience and the last 3 surveys held it without question even though they called it to be my line also.
This really does not affect my property, but it does short change the adjoiner by almost 2 acres.
The adjoining land owner will probably find out about this one day and this latest surveyor will have a good tap-dance in front of him.
I have no moral to this story except to never let your guard down and always do your due diligence.
Randy
Randy,
Nice job and sounds like a little fun to resolve! Dang good thing it wasn't in Wisconson! Fence's hold there I hear!
Excellent work Randy. Can't wait for Schaut to post a response, or another reference to an article that is taken out of context.
That is pretty much standard procedure for us. We've found too many cases of faulty descriptions involving either our tract or one or more adjoiners. One of the simplest was a 100-foot town lot that had 110 feet sold from it on the same day. I think it was the north 60 feet and the south 50 feet...back in 1945. Either description looked perfectly fine by itself. Even the County Appraiser's office had not brought this anyone's attention.
Schaut says you made a mistake. The fence line holds. You short changed your client, obviously he was occupying those 2 acres!!!! Shame on you actually trying to reconcile the property to the deeds in direct opposition of the obvious intentions of the property owners for the last 25 years! You good for nothing deed staker!
(This is what I am betting the monologue from Richard will be. Personally I thunk you done good, Randy! But what do I know, I got my licenses out of cracker jack boxes the way Richard tells it 😛 )
Adjoiner research is SOP by law in VA. I can't even THINK of doing a survey without through research of the adjoiners. Even lots in a platted subdivision get a cursory glance to make sure there wasn't a boundary line revision or something that someone missed while transferring the subject lot (I've seen it happen).
I would hope that Richard has a 10 foot pole on this one. lol
Y'all don't get it. Richard knows what he espouses is wrong, but he has to justify his past actions by filibustering about it. I think he feels that if he says it enough, his way will eventually be accepted by (any) others.
I think I can top that one, Randy
Randy, that's a classic example of a basic research failure, but I think I can top it.
I guess it was about six years ago I was consulted on a boundary dispute that involved some surveys that had been located in the 1850's (as I recall) along the Guadalupe River. The sidelines ran back though some of the densest, roughest cedar brake I believe I've ever seen. There were some pasture fences in the vicinity of the lines, but the adjoining owners had executed and recorded an agreement to the effect that the ragged fence was just a fence, that neither was claiming it to be the boundary. Fast forward two years (I think it was) and the property sells. The next surveyor meanders the fence will all its irregularies calling it the common line that only two years previously had been fixed by agreement as a straight line from end to end!
Randy
You could be nasty and call the adjoiner to inform him about the fence. Anonymously, of course. Or Not. Your Choice.
Since when did a surveyor acquire ownership rights in the land being surveyed?
A record description merely indicates, (not controls), the most probable location of a property line at some time in the past.
Nothing stops adjoining landowners from establishing their common property line where they want it to be.
The surveyor's responsibility is to recover and analyze established physical evidence of the limits of occupation and control between adjoining land owners. This marks the location of the legal property line, not some interpretation of the words of the record description.
Once the location of the established legal property line is determined, the surveyor then determines either the acceptablility of the record or the necessity and type of correction that is necessary to preserve the ownership rights of the land owners.
Surveyors have no obligation to preserve the existing record description and surveyors have no obligation to follow in the footsteps of the original surveyor unless the owners have preserved the original boundary.
There is no presumption of accuracy in our land records; in fact, the opposite is true.
From Wigmore;’s compendium on “Evidence”, 2nd. Edition, Vol. 5 Section 2476:
“It is not necessary, and it is not humanly possible, for the symbols of description, which we call words, to describe in every detail the objects designated by the symbols. The notion that a description is a complete enumeration is an instinctive fallacy which must be got rid of before interpretation can be properly attempted. …”
You will find the same essential principle in Corpus Jurist, Corpus Jurist Secundus, American Jurist and American Jurist 2nd.
Neither deed staking nor 'straight line surveying' is any legitimate part of professional land surveying here in the US.
Richard Schaut
Richard
You're exactly right, but absent of an agreement in the court house, we can ONLY survey the lines where they be and show the fences in relationship to them. In Randy's case, and he didn't say, but his SENIOR tract had been held by common ownership for 60 years and you would have thought that he would have been told about an agreement, if it existed pertaining to the fence.
While you're right about the rights of the landowner, it does not preclude us from actually locating the property boundaries as stipulated in the deed. This is not to say that we are merely deed stakers, but simply using the "4 corner" rule, which is the preferred method for locating boundaries.
In Randy's case, some idiot surveyor meandered a fence when he didn't take the final step to actually do some surveying and locate corners.
Fences are just fences until PROVEN otherwise, either from verbal testimony from BOTH affected owners, or an agreement memorialized in the court house.
Fences along creeks
> Fences are just fences until PROVEN otherwise, either from verbal testimony from BOTH affected owners, or an agreement memorialized in the court house.
And if there is anywhere that the first presumption that a fence is merely a convenience fence would almost always be right, it's along a creek.
Fences along creeks
re: I would hope that Richard has a 10 foot pole on this one. lol
Now that could be a real source of a problem for a land surveyor. I suggest only using a standard 16½' pole to solve the issue.
Richard
Fences are just fences until PROVEN otherwise, either from verbal testimony from BOTH affected owners, or an agreement memorialized in the court house.
Absolutely wrong. Fences are visible evidence of the limits of occupation and control. Statutes of limitation or repose like Texas's section 16 of the Civil Procedures and Remedies Code recognize that visible evidence of occupation and control that are unchallenged by the affected owners for the specified length of time mark the location the legal property lines. Buyers who take possession when established legal boundaries are visible are bound by them because the new owner was not a party to the agreement represented by the existence of the visible physical evidence and therefore cannot abrogate such an agreement.
How does an agreement get drafted and recorded if the owners are not informed by the surveyor that such a document is needed?
The surveyor who fails to inform his client that such visible physical evidence of a legal boundary exists is facilitating a fraudulent real estate transaction.
There has to be PROOF that an owner does occupy and control land on both sides of the fence for the surveyor to claim the fence is a convenience fence. A description is not proof of occupation and control.
Richard Schaut
Richard
State all of the codes and rules you can find on the internet.
Do anyone of them talk about common sense?
If a fence is placed on a creek bluff just to keep cattle out of the creek
bottom and it has been there for a certain period of time, do you really think that this thing made of wire and steel makes for a boundary line.
You ridicule the ranchers that put it there.
It is nothing more than a fence built where it could be built.
If some of these hard working ranchers could rise from the grave, they would bop you on the head with a stick and tell you how stupid you are.
Common sense still means a lot in our profession, at least here it does.
Randy
Hambright
There is nothing saying that a rancher cannot abandon a claim to land and recognize the existing fence as a property line which seems to be the case for the previous surveyors who followed the fence. Just becasue they did not know how to create and help the owner record a document clarifying the specifics does not mean the specifics do not apply.
You are not the land owner, and you are not able to know what the dead ranchers intended when they placed the fence.
Richard Schaut
Jeez, Schaut
There is also nothing that says a rancher can't build a fence for their own convenience and NOT relinquish a claim to land lawfully owned by them...
Jeez, Schaut
Well, if you follow Schaut's illogical ideology, then everyone here needs to start advising their clients that unless they build it contiguous to every boundary line, to the nearest thousandth of a foot, NEVER build a fence on your property, ever.
Schaut's monologue would probably be a huge hit as a comedy routine at surveyor's conventions. It couldn't be received as anything else.
