Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
by a conservation agency for wetlands delineation. A plan may be required by a
bank before it will approve a mortgage or other financing. In some circumstances
ALTA/ASCM (American Land Title Association/American Congress on Surveying
and Mapping) requirements must be met, which include surveying standards and
plan standards. In our increasingly bureaucratic world, municipal, state and federal
agencies appear to have a limitless appetite for enacting regulations which require
the applicant to submit plans for just about any imaginable project or purpose.
As the preceding paragraphs indicate, depending on the circumstances, a plan
may be regulated by a government authority. So, the plan purpose and jurisdiction
may be the overriding factor in determining whether or not a plan will need to be
drawn, and if so, what information will need to be shown.
16.1 Recording Plans
Plans can be prepared for recording in a public recorder's office or merely held in
private records.
The recording of plans is yet another area that will depend to a certain extent on
government regulation and therefore the jurisdiction. As has already discussed, the
land records recording system primarily serves a notice function. When a deed or
plan is placed on record, the public is presumed to be on notice of the contents of
the document. The recording office usually does not take any position relative to the
correctness of the information shown on the plan. They simply accept documents for
recording (along with a recording fee) from any person who wants the document to be
recorded. That is not to say that all documents will be accepted however. With regard
to plans, recorders offices often have regulations such as plan size, plan material, ink
type, whether the plan is stamped and signed by a licensed land surveyor, whether
it needs to be signed by a planning board and other items not directly related to the
survey. The recorder's office takes no position relative to whether the survey informa-
tion shown on the plan such as the metes and bounds, monuments, abutter names and
other information relating particularly to the surveyed parcel, is correct or incorrect.
16.2 Effect of Recording a Plan
Let's consider the effect of placing a plan on record. Imagine that a surveyor per-
formed a retracement survey of a 100 year old parcel described ambiguously by
the client's deed. The abutter's deed is no more helpful in describing the location
of the common boundary. In spite of these difficulties, the surveyor is confident
that her opinion regarding the location of the boundary is reasonable and will
stand up to scrutiny. The abutter disagrees with the surveyor's boundary location
but presently doesn't want to go to the expense of hiring “his own surveyor”. The
client has confidence in the surveyor's results (after all he did pay him quite a lot
