Rewriting Legal Descriptions 2010-2011 Winfield Eldridge Jr. Award

摘要

Legal descriptions are written to uniquely identify and locate a parcel of land as result of a boundary survey or when requested by a client or title company. Surveyors, civil engineers, attorneys, and other professionals may all encounter these documents. Writing legal descriptions is often a challenge for practicing surveyors, and it can be quite a challenge for others to understand them. Gurdon Wattles is renowned for his knowledge on legal writing, and his book, "Writing Legal Descriptions," in print since 1976, is still a reputable source for writing and interpreting legal descriptions. Wattles (1976) lists the following five types of descriptions: a) Metes and bounds descriptions (metes means distance and direction, and bounds means reference to physical and legal monuments); b) A boundary description stated in reference to other parcels on record with ties to deeds of adjoining property lines; c) All or a part of a section in Public Land Area; d) A lot in a subdivision as shown on a map; and e) Strip descriptions for right-of-ways of pipelines, roads, etc, which may cross many parcels (Wattles 1976, p. 3.2). No matter what kind of description is being written, effort should be made to make is as brief and concise as possible, in "the proper grouping of words which delineates one specific piece of land which cannot apply to any other piece of land" (Wattles 3.1). Wattles insists that one's guiding principle should be "concise clarity without ambiguity."