Neighbor removed my property line pin

[TCBoomer]

The legal term is "adverse possession" and is very real and puts you in danger of losing the disputed property. Maybe not disputed now but someday...


And yes it is illegal to remove survey pins in any state. I would openly ask the neighbor if he removed the pin then mention the law and ramifications.

Adverse possession isn't an issue here and I'm aware of what the laws in CT state about it.

It appears popular opinion here so far is to approach the neighbor about the missing pin and the more I read the more I may do that in the near future

 

[TCBoomer]

I am a land surveyor, and I've read some ideas in this post that are both good and bad. My opinion is I wouldn't worry to much about adverse possession in this case. He saw the survey marker, you talked to him about it, and this puts him on notice that you know where the line is.

I wouldn't drive anything near the corner yourself. You might know roughly where the corner is, but not exactly. Don't offset the corner either. There is always a chance someone might think its the real corner.

Talk to your surveyor, he will probably reset the corner at a fair price since the original survey isn't that old. If I think there is a problem with someone removing one of my pins, I drive a corner down deeper, say about 12", then set another one on top of it. The person will pull the top pin, but not know the lower one is there.

Last of all, you are correct, don't mess with lawyers yet. You can't prove he pulled the pin, and if you get a lawyer involved, things have a way of escalating in a hurry.

Thanks for chiming in Dave...its reassuring to hear from a surveyor who knows the ropes. Since the trees establish the property line now, I have no intention of setting any pins myself.

 

[TCBoomer]

Don't know if was mentioned. On a past property after it was surveyed, the pins were replaced with rebar. I then took a post hole digger and cleared out over and around the rebar, in went a half-bag of cement. Made for a nice, clean visual location point.

I like that idea and may look into the legal side of whether it's allowed

 

[TCBoomer]

Y E S

Not likely since the pin was only a few inches from the phone line riser and the area including the riser cap were covered with bright orange paint from the surveyor...you'd have to be blind or ignorant not to recognize it

 

[Jstpssng]

I agree. I also would not dig around it to pour concrete unless the surveyor was present to confirm that it was correctly placed afterward.
Probably some of this comes from the summer I spent as a "intern" (aka unpaid runner, gofer, etc for a field crew) at a surveyors office.

Aaron Z

My brother did that recently at his camp; plus set 2 referenxe pins. Still the corner disappeared during construction; then his his neighbor built a fence 1 1/2 feet onto my brother's land. When he broached the subject the neighbor was amiceble: still, they have to hire a surveyor of the neighbor's choosing. Bro's been a surveyor for 40 years... it's got to stink to pay for what he already knows.

My girlfriend just bought a new house. It was advertised as 38 acres, property was listed with the county as 38 acres, all 38 acres were taxed as well. When they did the paperwork to close the deal they found a problem and in fact the property is actually only 35 acres. Somehow a long time ago someone made a mistake and that mistake added 3 acres to the property that never existed.

Maybe Dodge Man can verify this, but consider surveying equipment even 50 years ago. The acreage is supposed to be calculated on the basis of a flat-level plane (at sea level?). Due to hills and slopes, the actual surface area on the ground may "contain" more acres than the area of the flat-level plane at sea level. If you measure and calculate based on tape-measure distances, your calculated acreage will be more than the acreage calculated on the flat-level plane.

But then I'm sure this doesn't account for all of the differences.

Most of those deed read "plus or minus".I was taught that up here that translated to roughly 10%.

My land seems to beactually over the deed by about that, partly because an adjacent survey years ago gave me the benefit of the doubt. :thumbsup:

Some people say they need "one line surveyed"... This is like asking a mechanic to "rebuild one cylinder."

 

[Tollster]

I would not sweat it, move on and be done, your a better person for doing so and remember that. In many parts of the country its illegal to remove pins, but you would be hard beat to prove anything. but keep one thing in mind. In some parts of the country such as here in Pennsylvania, if one maintains the property that borders theirs, such as mowing, there is a period of time that must pass, but they can claim it as their own and its hard to dispute. So don't have him mow or prune...otherwise..let bygones be bygones.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My neighbor at my last house had a fence built one day. I never knew exactly where the corner pins were when I bought the house, and the neighbor never had it marked when the fence was built, I doubt he even knew where corners were. It was an established neighborhood, with the houses about 20 yrs old at the time. When we bought the house the mortgage company required a survey, but it was not a physical survey, they just provide a paper copy of the survey that was done when the lots were divided. I took my paper survey, and started looking for the pins by digging into the ground with a shovel around the area the pin should have been. After finding one, I was eventually able to find all but one corner of the 5. It turns out the fence was on the neighbors side, but it was about 4' away at the front end and 1' away at the back end, so I mowed to the fence and got to enjoy a slightly larger lawn. The pin I never found should have been under an existing 8-10" pine tree, across the back neighbors fence. They apparently had cut across the corner with their fence (existing when I bought) yrs before, and planted a tree on the corner. I just let it be, but was glad I knew where they were if I needed to know. The 4 I found were slightly underground.

 

[sdkubota]

Most rural property owners own the land to the center of the county road as far as tax purposes. When calculating acreage, make sure you take that into consideration.

 

[sixdogs]

I like the idea about having the surveyor set a new pin on top of another. Just pay up, move on and see what happens. If the pin gets moved after that, which I would hope not, then you can deal with it differently. I have had similar issues and when the other guy saw how determined I was, the problem fixed itself. Perserverance solves a lot of problems.

 

[Boostinjdm]

I'm still trying to figure out what the problem is. You know the lot line. The neighbor knows the lot line. You have trees or whatever planted close to the lot line. I'd say just mow one mower width on the outside of the trees and leave it alone.
It would be a problem if he was trying to profit from or use the property in question, but it doesn't sound like that's the case. I've got a property line running willy nilly through a field. The same farmers rent both sides. According to lot lines overlayed on satelite photos, I'm getting shorted a few rows every year. I don't raise a stink cuz it just isn't worth it. Some day there may be problems though if I divide up the property. I'll deal with it at that point.