Another Great Affidavit of Possession
Better yet
> I guess the baby girl was on the crew that set the fence posts, so she should know!
Better yet, I think that she and her family were residing in San Angelo, more than 50 miles away. She must have been both a savant and possibly psychic to have been able to give an affidavit as she later did. There is a whole series of affidavits cluttering up the public records, given by various siblings, affidavits dealing with different tracts in the area and mostly appearing to have been written by some land man for an oil company dangling a lease payment in front of the affiant. "Just sign right here."
I'll post a bit of another lame one that is par for the course.
Better yet
I posted something out of the Manual that I found interesting. A single sentence or two. No biggie, just a forum post, I wasn't trying to make any big statement or anything.
Dang you'd think I committed some kind of sacrilege.
I was the worst sort of apostate manual blasphemer.
some posters make too much of these forum threads. I've gotten hate e-mails; some people need to get a grip. Kent brought up something that's kind of a humorous thing and an obvious problem; I don't understand the need to start getting abusive.
What is the legal status of an affidavit that has gone unchallenged for a long time, even though it has an obvious problem with believability of the affiant's direct knowledge? It certainly would carry less weight than a contradictory one that didn't have such a problem. But is there a rebuttable presumption that it is correct, or what?
> What is the legal status of an affidavit that has gone unchallenged for a long time, even though it has an obvious problem with believability of the affiant's direct knowledge? It certainly would carry less weight than a contradictory one that didn't have such a problem. But is there a rebuttable presumption that it is correct, or what?
Generally, affidavits are given less weight than direct testimony of live witnesses. The obvious reason for this is that the affiant isn't available for cross-examination. In the case of an affidavit such as that one that is simply not plausible, the burden of proof would have to be on the person producing it as evidence of the fact of some matter, I'd think.
For example, the affidavit of possession that simply states that so-and-so has been in "open, notorious, and hostile possession of some tract of land" (essentially legalistic summaries, not statements of some particular facts), but without actually describing the character of the possession in the terms that a witness at trial would have to in order to prove that it was open, notorious and hostile, would tend not to carry much weight with most judges, I'd think.
The other problem with affidavits is that they were so widely abused, oil company land men just whipping up something that looked good and eager recipients of lease payments signing the heck out of them. I'll post an example of a different variation.
