When to Rewrite a Description?

1/ 0.1'x0.3' off is not sufficient to push exterior lines all around town.

2/ Finding pipes that do no match your deed calls requires you to research and survey adjacent parcels and recover their monuments.

3/ In my opinion if you are doing an ALTA you are required to write a description and not merely refer to a lot or lots on a map.

Many people prefer a metes and bounds description, because a reference to a filed map lot requires one to hold the filed map, whereas a metes and bounds description can be drawn and held in one's own hand. I.e the owner can in fact hold what he owns. Often the description of a lot does not agree with the reversed bearings on the map creating some confusion to the ordinary man.

Is this a bunch of general gripes or are all on a single project?

Paul in PA

Each item is a different scenario. Only item #1 is ALTA related.

I agree, 0.1'-0.3' is not significant. I don't agree with how the consolidated boundary was developed, however.

As for item #2. Hypothetical only. Assume the found pipes are original, called monuments from a previous sell-off of a larger tract. They absolutely hold. Rewrite the description, or no? In light of title.

Thanks for helping clear that up.

I doubt the average client can or will trace their metes and bounds out. Anyone clever enough to do that would likely recognize their lot on a plat and understand that bearings can be reversed.

I provide a description if my client chooses not to record their plat, otherwise it's a reference to plat book and page as a picture is worth a thousand words.

Concerns of clouding title are real, but they should be addressed by the attorney with clear concise language and references to past deeds. Without being rude, I remind attorneys that it is my job to identify what exists on ground and their job to convey title. Attorneys working for the average Joe question nothing as they are only making a few hundred bucks and don't care. I've wondered more than once if the ALTA attorneys are nitpicking for the sake of increasing their billable hours.

To answer your question, I provide a new description when a plat is not recorded or if the original description would be hard for a surveyor to retrace. Sometimes I even ask my client (gasp!) what they prefer. A good/bad attorney can always find a way to cloud title if the financial incentive is there.

1. I cannot envision a situation where the best evidence of a boundary is a computed position 0.3 by 0.1 feet from an original monument. The distance is less important than the departure from sound practice. Step one is a discussion with the Surveyor of record.
2. If the found undisturbed monuments are not junior to the adjoiners you have the corners. Spread out and be sure. Remember, correct is an identity, not a distance.
3. My favorite change in the ALTA standards was the admonishment to stop polluting perfect Lot and Block descriptions with our trivial and misleading additions. Retracing a platted Lot is the simplest of concepts. We need to stop making it harder...

I would probably write a description on the first two. The first one because that abomination of calling for mythical positions a few tenths from actual monuments needs to be gotten out of the record. On the second one, on a tract of that size, I'd say that 4 feet would meet my gut feeling of needing to write a new description.

Item # 1: The practice outlined here is an abomination to our profession and needs to be ripped by the roots from our profession - maybe the only way to do this is to rip the offenders from our profession. Contact the previous "surveyor", if he refuses to fix the mess he has created, you know what you have to do.

Item #2: This is also a problem in our profession. We seem to believe that if the description and the location of the boundary doesn't meet our expected level of precision either the description is wrong and needs to be corrected or even worse (see #1), the boundary needs to be moved to match the measurements.
What is the purpose of a description? It is to facilitate "finding" where the boundary is located on the ground - obviously it is adequate as you have apparently found the boundary. What is our job? It is to express our opinion concerning the location of the boundary and to preserve the evidence of the location of the boundary. You have apparently completed step 1, now do step 2.

The reasons I would rewrite number 2 are two fold.

1. There are enough jacklegs in our profession that will attempt to move the boundary based upon the distances in the description.

2. Once the called for monuments in the description are destroyed, there is no way to replace them based on the record.

Surveyors should not add or remove language on deeds. This is why it is said the first deed is the correct one. Many times people add or remove words to descriptions thinking they are fixing what they see as a problem, and then the true intent gets lost over time. After looking at the deed or deeds that created the tract, I also look at the history of monuments the surveyors before me had to work with and those monuments missing when that surveyor did their survey. The time when the surveyor before me is important because it could be chain or steel tape measurement or EDM.
When I include in my reports, also part of my survey, I stay away from opinions I may have. I just point out the difference between what I found and what are in past survey records and deeds. The same goes for monuments. I start at the beginning or stone age.
Surveyors in my area have often asked me if I always go to that much work when I do a survey. My answer is "Not always".

Yes, new descriptions are for new lines / new parcels. If you can't help yourself and have to do the re-write, follow it with "being the same parcel as described in __________" referencing the recording information for the deed you chose to edit. That way everyone that follows will have the real deed along with your opinion of how it could be "improved".

Art S, post: 342633, member: 8983 wrote: Surveyors should not add or remove language on deeds. This is why it is said the first deed is the correct one. Many times people add or remove words to descriptions thinking they are fixing what they see as a problem, and then the true intent gets lost over time. After looking at the deed or deeds that created the tract, I also look at the history of monuments the surveyors before me had to work with and those monuments missing when that surveyor did their survey. The time when the surveyor before me is important because it could be chain or steel tape measurement or EDM.
When I include in my reports, also part of my survey, I stay away from opinions I may have. I just point out the difference between what I found and what are in past survey records and deeds. The same goes for monuments. I start at the beginning or stone age.
Surveyors in my area have often asked me if I always go to that much work when I do a survey. My answer is "Not always".

I don't understand this. All surveys are opinions.

I understand your reasons perfectly. A new description might help with #1, and a filed survey would help with both. Contrary to what I said earlier (the described conditions would require filing a survey in CA) you could do something like this: "thence N 00 15 33 W, 398.87 feet (North, 400 feet, record per Book 538 of Deeds, page 37) to a found 1 inch iron pipe accepted as being the one called for in said Book 538 of Deeds, page 37, now with 1 inch diameter brass tag stamped "LS Tommy Young" attached; thence...thence...
Being the same parcel of land described in Book 538 of Deeds, page 37, Clampett County Records.

It's still just your opinion, but you've explained yourself and kept the connection to the past.

Get out your "Evidence and Procedures for Boundary Location", Sixth Edition. Go to page 20 and start reading "Principle 3" at about 2/3 the way down the page.
When changing the words in the Legal Description (if it is a retracement) I make reference where the deed was located in the Court House or Register of Deeds office.
On my survey plat I start off by saying it is a description of my survey and I do not call it a Legal Description when it is not the same as the deeds of record. Then I go ahead and write my description.
If you use a description that is different than what is in the recorded deed, a lawyer or someone may use it and not the description of record.
As for the opinion, I can never be sure I found each and every peace of evidence from the stone age to the present.
Yes I do set monuments based on the evidence and formulate an opinion as to where to set any missing monuments.

Good point, Baja. Thanks!

0.07+50PPM.

And then there is the ongoing practice in Texas of rewriting everything, every time, such that no two descriptions are ever identical over time.

Gary Kent mentioned that very thing in a seminar Saturday before last.

I asked him if he was familiar with surveyconnect.com, because it sounded like he was talking about one poster in particular. He said he didn't come here very much.

Holy Cow, post: 342800, member: 50 wrote: And then there is the ongoing practice in Texas of rewriting everything, every time, such that no two descriptions are ever identical over time.

How many Texas metes and bounds have you read, how many tracts in Texas have you surveyed?

As I have grown older I have come to write only descriptions of new parcels. I do not think that I have the authority to "rewrite" or "fix" an existing description. It is my job to interpret existing descriptions, not change them...

The retracing surveyor has no authority to re-write a description.

[INDENT=1]The surveying method is to establish boundaries by running lines and fixing monuments on the ground while making field notes of such acts. From the field notes, plats of survey or " maps" are later drawn to depict that which was done on the ground. In establishing the original boundary on the ground the original surveyor is conclusively presumed to have been correct and if later surveyors find there is error in the locations, measurements or otherwise, such error is the error of the last surveyor. Likewise, boundaries originally located and set (right, wrong, good or bad) are primary and controlling when inconsistent with plats purporting to portray the survey and later notions as to what the original subdivider or surveyor intended to be doing or as to where later surveyors, working, perhaps, under better conditions and more accurately with better equipment, would locate the boundary solely by using the plat as a guide or plan. Written plats are not construction plans to be followed to correctly reestablish monuments and boundaries. They are " as built" drawings of what has already occurred on the ground and are properly used only to the extent they are helpful in finding and retracing the[/INDENT]
[INDENT=1]118 So.3d 899[/INDENT]
[INDENT=1]original survey which they are intended to describe; and to the extent that the original surveyor's lines and monuments on the ground are established by other evidence and are inconsistent with the lines on the plat of survey, the plat is to be disregarded. When evidence establishes a discrepancy between the location on the ground of the original boundary survey and the written plat of that survey the discrepancy is always resolved against the plat.[/INDENT]
[INDENT=1]433 So.2d at 552-53 (emphasis in original). See also Rivers v. Lozeau, 539 So.2d 1147, 1151 (Fla. 5th DCA 1989).[/INDENT]
[INDENT=1] [/INDENT]
[INDENT=1]Beckham/Tillman v. Bennett, 118 So.3d 896, 38 Fla. L. Weekly D 1555 (Fla.App. 1 Dist. 2013)[/INDENT]
[INDENT=1] [/INDENT]
The only method that I've found available for a legal description to be changed is when the original description fails to conform with the intent of the original parties' agreement. Only then can the original parties (or ones in close proximity) correct the description through a legal process referred to as "reformation."

Since making this discovery, I've stopped re-writing descriptions as I had been dutifully taught by my predecessors. No more will I set someone up for bastardizing the title record just because I think I could have written it "better." I certify that I have surveyed the property identified in accordance with the record description. I will show record vs surveyed bearings and distances on my survey. No need to re-write a description that was sufficient for identifying the property to be surveyed.

JBS