right on. The land surveyor is hired to make sure the intent of the legal description matches the intent of the grantor. The Professional Land Surveyor s the only person qualified to do this (if not legally, at least in my humble opinion). The landowner, realtor, or the lawyer may believe they have the ability, but most just aren't knowledgeable in the subtleties of what kind of havoc a poorly-written description can cause.
thebionicman, post: 340524, member: 8136 wrote: In matters of law, intent IS literally what was written. This may or may not relate to 'what they meant to do' ....
Actually in matters of law, intent is more often clearly shown in how the parties put the agreement into effect. If their actions match with those of the other party, any reasonable interpretation that is reflected by those actions is what will prevail. Resort is made to the literal meaning by the most common interpretation of the terms when the actions of the parties indicate disparity of understanding and the actions of each reflect either roughly equally reasonable or equally unreasonable interpretations of the writings.
I know of one section in Las Vegas which is broken down and monumented in both quarter-quarters and in 1320' segments.
There are two 1920's subs in the E 1/2 OF SE 1/4 and one legal is the South 20 Acres and the other legal is the North 60 Acres and sure enough there's a 14' gap between subs. Too bad they didn't describe them as the North 3/4 and the South 1/4. My crews alway came back with "check this out - there's an alley there" Some on the North use it and some on the South use it as their own. Makes an interesting back line.
eapls2708, post: 342322, member: 589 wrote: Actually in matters of law, intent is more often clearly shown in how the parties put the agreement into effect. If their actions match with those of the other party, any reasonable interpretation that is reflected by those actions is what will prevail. Resort is made to the literal meaning by the most common interpretation of the terms when the actions of the parties indicate disparity of understanding and the actions of each reflect either roughly equally reasonable or equally unreasonable interpretations of the writings.
The subject was intent of a written description. I completely agree the entirety of intent requires us to look at the evidence as a whole...
Intent is intent of the parties. It's not of much value to determine what the intent of the written description is because 1) it's an inanimate object and has no intent of its own, and 2) it is the attempt to reduce the intent of what the original grantor agreed to convey and the original grantee agreed to purchase accurately in to words. Sometimes the parties are relatively successful in doing that. Other times there are significant deviations between the two because, as is often the case in an aliquot part description or an "of" description of some parent parcel with record dimensions, the parties have no idea that the boundaries of the parent parcel on the ground may deviate from the record dimensions that were made known to them. A surprising number of people still believe that a section is 5280.0' x 5280.0', so an aliquot part, in their mind, will always be the same as a similar parcel described in terms of the nominal aliquot dimensions.
Any time a description is written to describe a portion of an existing parcel, and that portion has been established on the ground, the true intent remains open to question until you determine how closely the boundaries of the parent parcel are reflected by its record dimensions, and until you determine why, when and how the person or persons who established the limits of the portion did so.
If what they put into effect on the ground deviates to some extent from the precise literal interpretation of what is written, then anything you determine about the intent prior to considering the circumstances surrounding the conveyance and the physical evidence is of no use. The only value in attempting to determine intent prior to having these indispensable facts is to calculate initial search locations and really nothing more than that.
Limiting the discussion of intent to the words alone, when placed in context of determining whether it must be interpreted by only one of two possible and reasonable interpretations is incomplete and meaningless at best, and misleading and potentially damaging to established property rights if a lesser experienced surveyor takes the answer on the incomplete question and applies it to a real survey regardless of evidence of a different interpretation.