Thanks,

James R. Green, PLS

This is to provide a response to your question about “legal descriptions” provided by land surveyors. Board Rule 180-7-.02(2) pertains to written property descriptions which are prepared and presented as a report. Such a legal description would also be governed by the Sealing of Documents Rule which is 180-12-.02. These rules apply when the property description is produced as a “stand alone” work product which cannot be edited, which is in fact a very rare occurrence. It is unfortunate that many Land Surveyors do not understand the Board’s rules which have been in place for a number of years. If a Land Surveyor is issuing to you a written property description as a standalone (end product) document/report, then all provisions of both rules must indeed be adhered to including seal and signature. The reason for this is so that in the absence of the survey in the future, that the description would be “second best” and provide adequate useful information to a future retracing surveyor. However, the more common occurrence in Georgia is twofold as follows.

The first is that surveyors have surveyed a piece of property and are asked to provide a description in Word format and provide it to the attorney for inclusion into the multiple related closing documents (such as warranty deeds, quitclaim deeds, affidavits, disclosures, and security deeds). In this instance, the surveyor is merely producing a raw data work product using software for ease and to minimize the possibility of scrivener’s errors. This is similar to a land surveyor producing an electronic drawing file of a topographic or location survey exercise for an engineer. In either case, the surveyor is not producing the end product, but merely providing an affiliate professional with data that is necessary or useful for their role in the transaction or project. The Board has not assumed any jurisdiction over a Land Surveyor sharing such data with attorneys. In this instance, the attorney is the one who prepares the documents for conveyance and is responsible for the content. Attorneys are not under the jurisdiction of the Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. Land Surveyors should not confuse the sharing of a Word file with the issuance of a sealed legal description to be used as an end product for conveyances.

The second instance is the inclusion of a property description on the face of the survey. In this instance, the information required in 180-7-.02(2) is to already be provided on the face of the survey, and I would see no need to be redundant by citing it within the description on the survey unless someone requested such. The survey itself must meet the requirements for surveys. Additional information that is not required by Board Rules, such as an ALTA certification, vicinity map, or citation of metes and bounds, etc. should be accurate but is not bound by specific technical specifications.

In conclusion, a Word document property description that is sent to another professional for preparation of an end product is not bound by the same guidelines as a description provided as a final work product. A property description on the face of a survey is “auxiliary” information that is provided at the request of or as a convenience to a client or other end user. The data on the survey is to meet all requirements of Board Rule 180-7-.07, which in turn may also provide the information (such as adjoining property owners) required by 180-7-.02(2). Also, the attorney may change (add, revise, or delete) anything in a property description that is provided in raw electronic format, as the attorney becomes the one responsible for the legal description. The surveyor is just providing helpful data that saves hours of typing bearings, distances, corner descriptions, etc.

          Sounds like these attorneys are inexperienced in conveyancing, or lacking in knowledge, or both.  Tell them that if the survey is properly performed, there is no conflict between the monuments on the ground, the bearings and distances the surveyor determined, and the names of the adjoining property owners, in a description based on that survey.

          If a description contains bearings and distances that are inaccurate, you WANT the call for adjoining landowners to override them.  This is because the description should include all the land up to but not beyond the true boundaries of the adjoining tracts and thus avoid creating overlaps and gores between the property being described and the adjoining tracts.

          You might, (somewhat  sarcastically) suggest to these attorneys that if they are concerned about the possibility of a conflict between the bearings and distances and the calls for adjoiners, the bearings and distances should be omitted from the description, and the description simply call for the adjoining landowners.  As stated in Riley v. Griffin, 16 Ga. 141, 60 Am. Dec. 726 (1854) “When the lines or courses of an adjoining tract, are called for in a deed or grant, the lines shall be extended to them, without regard to distance ... courses and distances occupy the lowest grade, instead of the highest, in the scale of evidence, as to the identity of land ... courses and distances ... [are] pointers or guides merely, to ascertain the natural objects of boundary.”

          It is extremely useful to define all the descriptive elements of boundaries, including listing the adjoining landowners.  Probably all of us have had the experience of trying to figure out the general location of a tract of land described in a deed by a long series of calls for monuments, bearings, and distances, and nothing else, and no plat called for.  In such cases we often have to sketch the property off, more or less to scale, and compare the sketch with tax maps or whatever, to figure out where the property is.  If, in addition, the adjoining landowners are stated, the general location of the land can often be readily visualized, so as to avoid having to go to this trouble.

          I must note that many surveyors are careless about insuring that the names of the adjoining landowners stated on their plats are correct.  So many times surveyors rely on tax maps, or they use the names given on an old plat of the land they are surveying (which is often incorrect), or they ask the landowner they are doing the survey for, for the names of the adjoining landowners, and they put that on their plats.  Such information is usually incomplete or wrong.  Surveyors should always consult, not only the deed for the land they are surveying, but the current, vesting deeds of each adjoining tract, to ascertain that there are no conflicts in the descriptions about the boundaries of the land they are surveying and the adjoining tracts.  By having copies of the current, vesting deeds to the adjoining tracts, they have the means to accurately label the adjoining landowners.

Here is another possible perspective on the above described issue.  Title attorneys, of course, generally have no independent means for verifying whether the calls for monuments and the bearings and distances given on a plat made by a surveyor are correct.  They have to depend on the trustworthiness of the surveyor for that.  But they do know, from title research, the correct names of the adjoining landowners.  One of the more frequent complaints attorneys make about surveys is that the names for the adjoining landowners labeled on plats are inaccurate.  The names are inaccurate usually for one or more of the reasons stated above.  In drawing up metes and bounds descriptions to be used in deeds, attorneys are often faced with the dilemma of stating the monuments, bearings, and distances from the plat and listing the adjoining (incorrect) landowners given on the plat, which makes the deed description inaccurate; or stating the monuments, bearings, and distances from the plat and listing the correct adjoining landowners, which makes the deed description contradict the plat that is referred to.  Attorneys have often expressed exasperation to me about the difficulty of getting surveyors to correct the names of the adjoining landowners on their plats.  For the situation under discussion, maybe the attorneys are attempting to sidestep the issue of drafting deed descriptions that give incorrect adjoining landowners (taken from the plat), or drafting deed descriptions that give correct adjoining landowners but that contradict the names of the adjoining landowners given on the plat referred to.

Rule 180-7-.02 Land Titles and Location

And:

Rule 180-7-.07 Maps and Plats