Funny thing about setbacks.. city ordnance here says no structure within 20ft of property line.. Meanwhile city code defines a fence as a “structure” every house in the subdivision that butts up to me on one side has fences on the lines. Guy at one of my corners built a pool 10ft off my line then built a fence on the line.. I reached out to city building inspector and said hey look at this.. still waiting on a response. Granted I have acreage an not part of the Nabor hood, just interested in their response. Figured I’d just tie into his with barb wire and push a few cows on that side LOL..

Had a judge I hunted with one time tell me a property lines are by law really 6 feet wide . The line plus or minus 3 feet. That was 40 years ago or so he told me that.

You mean like leaving the base path in baseball?



Be careful with that new survey. If they are selling the property and that new legal description makes it onto the deed then it will always be a problem. Like when you go to sell your land one day.

Old fences will absolutely stand up in court as the line , especially if they've been there many years and it can be proved previous owners were in agreement . New owners getting a survey after they purchase is like closing the barn door after the horse is out. Lawyers love surveyors , they're good for business .

Also surveyors can enter property to do survey work without permission, it's the law.

Old fences i can say by the hard way. That is not always true . It all come down to what the judge says .

Nothing is ALWAYS when dealing with Alabama courts.

Due to the magnetic declination or which surveyor did survey it could be off 10 feet. If that is the case everyone's property would shift 10 feet or would it? Was the fence put their according to the old stobs and not 10 foot across the line? Was the new survey done by gps or the section corner? See how this get's as complicated as you make it.

doubt a judge has heard that one before

That happened to us when I was a kid, but it was about 50'. My dad then hired a surveyor and the flags got put 50' over in the adjacent landowners field. Other guy decided he liked the fence where it originally was.

It’s not so simple, especially when some deed descriptions reference landmarks that may no longer be there such as trees or canebrakes or streams that may have altered their course. Then there’s errors in distance etc. That’s why there are court ordered monuments etc. if you took all the deeds and laid them out, it wouldn’t “fit”.

[quote=outdoors1Was the new survey done by gps or the section corner? See how this get's as complicated as you make it. [/quote]

It is not complicated and this example is absurd. GPS is a tool and does not determine anything. Even using gps surveyors still, or should, reference hard monuments. I just laugh when I get out of my truck and ignorant people see my GPS and think their survey is preprogrammed into it.

If the landowner does not send a registered letter to adjoining landowner in a 7 year period stating he protests the fence line and does not recognize it as a property line, the other landowner can claim it as theirs. That is the way it used to be. I used to run into this all the time when I was buying timber. A lot of landowners were pissed when they found out.

Like a lot of other statements on here, there is a lot of truth to that, but there are a few "as ofs", heretofore's", whereas's that have to be considered, which is why these things occasionally end up in court.
So somebody put up a fence. Hostile/adverse possession must be open, hostile (which would be negated by giving permission, as Drake says), constant, and ongoing. The fence alone isn't an absolute answer. Nor is sneaking across it in the dark of the moon every year of twol Who uses the property on the disputed side of the fence? Cuts hay/trees, uses it as an access, parks farm equipment there, maintains a food plot,etc?

Wildland surveying occasionally relies on a compass, but more often on celestial observation, if they are looking for any degree of certainty. And, surveyors have been aware of, and account for, magnetic declination for hundreds of years.

"It’s not so simple, especially when some deed descriptions reference landmarks that may no longer be there such as trees or canebrakes or streams that may have altered their course." Typically, in Alabama, rural land surveying and mapping relies on the Township and range system, and there are indeed monuments and benchmarks at defined location at least every square mile or so. A survey ties into those known points. I have looked at GA and TN surveys that reference "the well where Mr. Jones' cow fell in,.... to the big lighning struck oak, of in the bend of the branch", but that is awfully rare here. We do have to deal with changes in water courses over time.

A fence, right or wrong, is established as the line under a law known as "adverse possession".The owner must prove "open and notorious possession"of said property for 10 years. If the owner has used the fence as the line and the land inside of it as his own without question for a period of 10 years or more, the fence is the line.

Had a life long neighbor get pissed because I put up a shooting house on my own property. He had some survivors come out. Put stobs 40' on my side of the fence. I pulled them. He put up concrete post. Pulled them too. Said he'd have me arrested for trespassing. Told him I know your old but I'd cut you house down. When I finally had it done 10 years later..... they flagged the barbed wire in the fence row.

The property I am surveying right now would really give some these keyboard professionals fits. There are multiple fences along each line of this property. So for you professionals, which fence do I use to be correct? They range anywhere from a foot apart to about 18 feet. Should I disregard the quarter lines and just pick a fence?🙄

I have a question about a survey we had done. The deed states acreage and a certain boundary but use ditches and trees as corners. Measured with rods and chains but is flat ground. The surveyor went back to property lines before a national landmark came thru. Used section corner etc… as a corner. We gained some softwood timber and changed one section. Moved the north line south 30 ft or so but added 150 ft on southern line but we lost 30 ft on west line. Acreage is approximately the same for that portion.

Surveyor said he was 99% the previous survey was wrong. It was surveyed by landowner (at the time) to the west 50 plus years ago.

We cross 4 other landowners and came with an appurtenant easement that was on our original deed. Been some discussion if that carried over to us. Lawyer says it does.

I find it interesting that several different surveys can be done and all have different outcomes yet still be good supposedly.

It’s whichever ever fence papaw said was the line. Duh

Appurtenant easement runs with the land. Does not change when landowners change. It carries over.

The different surveys typically results from different surveyors coming from different directions. Some surveyors forget that the their work is not any more accurate than the original survey. They should just be retracing the original. Alot of room for open interpretation when descriptions are wrote by land features or 1/4 sections.

Appurtenant easement runs with the land. Does not change when landowners change. It carries over.

That’s correct. I just dealt with this on a land deal and that’s what the attorney stated as well.