Abstract

The Art and Science of Real Property Descriptions: Situational Awareness
Track: Education
Authors: Wendy Lathrop

As readers of documents that address every aspect of land - its location, its character, its physical dimensions - surveyors, title examiners, and attorneys must all be intimately familiar with the variety of possible interpretations and misinterpretations. Strange and unusual things happen when language is not clear and the law is therefore misapplied.

Real property boundary descriptions must be clear, concise, and preserve all the evidence pertaining to the location of real property interests. When these documents are missing, incomplete, or ambiguously written, we play a losing game of forensics in locating limited and full ownership interests on, above, or below the earth's surface.

This course examines the real property description in the context of time and custom, illustrated with case law examples of the effects of regional language and surveying practice. Our objective is to improve the documents we write and to better understand existing documents we encounter.