Claimjumpers

[Alan W.]

Anyone else ever had any trouble with your neighbors concerning the property lines? Had one that insisted that the property line was where they said it was even though the surveyor said both our deeds matched perfectly where the line came out at. The line was surveyed to the exact place it has always been since my Great Grandfather owned it. What makes people like this? I honestly believe that these people have sincerely convinced themselves that the line is where they say it is. Even after the inevitable court battle in which the judge basically told them that they were crazy, they still threaten to take my fence down. They are too old to do anything in reality, but that mouthing!!!!

 

[TomG]

No, we don't have trouble, but there are some long-standing disputes in the area. At least in Canada, surveys don't always resolve disputes.

We had our camp surveyed, because we hoped that a utility pole was on our side so we could use it for a pole service, and we wanted to make sure a leeching pit and some other things we're doing don't encroach. The pole wasn't on our place, so now we have a new one 20' from the old one.

The owner of the survey company made some interesting comments. He said that there are several ways of establishing ownership, and a legal survey is just one of them. Usage is another way of claiming ownership, and often a judge will uphold usage, if usage conflicts with a legal survey.

Usage is something like your great-grandfather's fence. At least by the law around here, any neighbour who said that the fence is the property line would be about as strong of claim as many legal surveys. I believe this is true, because usage is a matter of common law that predates surveys. Also, because the survey work in many areas ultimately isn't based on anything very solid. Anyway, if a recognized fence and several surveys agree, the neighbour is probably wasting money in court.

What messes up survey work are things like: The great lot surveys weren't that accurate (great lots in the East were laid out in the 1700's and the original surveys were rectilinear even in the mid-west). Many great lot corner markers are lost. Surveyor's stakes are lost or moved. Surveyors often reference stakes that mark other properties. A lost, moved, or found stake down the road can affect the survey for an entirely separate property. In addition, severances sometimes are described in terms of local landmarks that no longer exist; or, the landmarks noted in several deeds actually describe overlapping areas.

All these factors mean that a legal survey in many areas is only a weak claim to ownership. Could be that the neighbour got hold of an old survey and thinks that surveys are rocket science and absolute. But, as you say, 'Why are some people like that?'

 

[Thomas]

Alan,
With the courts judgement sounds like you are all set.
If your neighbors should tear down the fence or damage your land, than let the courts decide the out come once again.
I would aviod your neighbors to a certain degree and let this issue cool off.
Take care and enjoy the start of a new summer./w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif

Thomas..NH

 

[Bird]

Thank goodness I've never had that problem, but while shootin' the bull with a local banker some time ago, he was telling me about a piece of property they were going to finance, and they eventually hired three different surveyors to survey it, and all three came up with different conclusions about where the property line was. The owners of the two pieces of property just finally reached an agreement between themselves on where it should be.

Bird

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Surveys are supposed to be a science but more often than not they tend to be art. I have had 2 surveyors survey the same property and be a few feet apart. A couple of years ago when I bought my current property, the surveyor used Global Positioning System to locate the corners of the property and came up 10 feet off what had been marked by a guy with a transit about five years earlier. It really caused some confusion and cost me money to get the mess straightened out. Here they are trying to go to longitudinal and latitudinal property descriptions and I had to convince them to use the old method of describing the property. The fences have been up about 40 years so I'm not sure how the courts would rule. I think they call it imminent domain but am not sure. The law basically says that if the property line is recognized by all and unchallenged for 15 years that becomes the de facto property line. I'm sure there is more to it than that but that is a simplified version as I understand it.

 

[Jag]

People never stop amazing me. When I was a young man the lady who livied across from my grandparents in a small rural town moved to be close to her childern. The people who moved into her place in less than a year started to tell everyone around them where all the property lines were. This is all the same people who had lived there for the last thirty years. They even took down the Baptist Church fence because they said that it was five foot over their property line and wanted to make their garden larger.

 

[Alan W.]

I guess I came out better than my buddy did. He purchased some knobland that adjoins his property. When he was having it surveyed it became apparent that a neighbor had moved his fence over quite a bit. They went to court with the neighbor claiming that he owned the property by adverse possesion. The neighbor didn't deny moving the fence, but claimed that it had been so long since he did it that it was rightfully his due to the adverse possesion law. The courts found in favor of my buddy, stating that the adverse possesion law would only apply if they were actually living in a house on the property, simply moving the fence regardless of the amount of years did not constitute ownership. His court time and cost was about three times what mine were. That fall the neighbor was using the property like it still was his, my buddy confronted him about it they got into a fight and my buddy was stabbed in the back. It took him about six months to get the legal problems of that incident straightend out.

 

[Alan L.]

There's one in every crowd. Here in our town there is a small development with nice 1700-1800 sq foot houses, nice lawns - very middle class. A friend of mine who lives there built a 6' wood privacy fence in his back yard, butting it up against his neighors already constructed fence to enclose his yard. My friend's house was not even built when the neighbor put up that fence. The neighbor pitched a fit, telling him he couldn't "use" his fence, by enclosing the rest of the yard. Finally the neighbor TOOK HIS OWN FENCE DOWN and moved it 3 feet away from my friends property, so that my friend would have to build 3 feet of fence on the neighbor's property to enclose his yard, which he couldn't do of course. So now there are two fences, with 3 feet of the neighbor's property wasted in between.

 

[TomG]

I can't remember what the survey company guy said about GPS surveys, but my impression is that he didn't consider GPS data very useful in defending a survey in court. The immanent domain stuff seems to provide the strongest legal claim. I don't think it's much more complicated than stated, but as most legal things are, it's probably highly qualified.

For example, an early survey drawing of our property indicates a surveyor stake at one corner. A later drawing by the same surveyor describes of a bore-hole in a rock as the corner. However, nowhere in any field notes is there mention of the surveyor removing a stake and making a bore-hole. We found a bore-hole in a rock face, and it would be hard to drive a stake nearby. So the surveyor asks: 'Has anybody ever told you that's the property corner? No? Well, I'm prepared to defend that hole as the property corner unless there's a conflicting claim. Thank god nobody much cares about exact property lines, at least at the moment. Seems like things can get real complicated.

A useful idea I picked up is that surveyor field notes are extremely important. Surveyors, when they retire, sell their practices along with their notes, and survey companies advertise as 'having the notes of various surveyors.' Survey companies may cooperate with each other and exchange notes. However, it seems like a good idea to use a survey company that has the notes of a surveyor who did an old survey. At least that's how we found out that one of our corners is a bit complicated. That's also how we found out that we probably have almost 20' foot more at the back than we thought. Twenty foot can be important in lacing utility poles or septic fields. Utility companies and health department officials may not care whether neighbours cooperate or not.

 

[ejb]

GPS's as far as I understand them, couldn't possibly be as accurate as using a transit. All GPS systems that I am aware of, use military satellites, and the militaty purposefully introduces a certain amount of error into the results so that unless you have the "secret decoder ring" you can not get pinpoint accuracy. They wanted to avoid some foreign power from sending a missle our way with pin-point accuracy (navigated by our own satellites to boot).