Land Surveying and Land Registration

The most important problems of land surveying and land registration are (1) lack of certainty on the part of property owners concerning positions of monuments and boundaries on the ground including difficulties in re-establishment of lost corners; (2) insecurity of many title searches and abstracts together with uncertainty of court interpretations of title descriptions; and (3) dubious technical quality of many land surveys and their descriptions. The solution of the problems on a state-wide basis includes enactment of legislation covering (1) proper qualifications and licensing of those who perform land surveys; (2) establishing a state plane coordinate system and, over a period of years, requiring all land monuments to be tied to it; (3) a three-phase plan for surveying, describing, and recording each parcel of land so that simple guaranteed title certificates can replace cumbersome and unreliable abstracts of title; and (4) establishing a state administrative system on a county-by-county basis to supervise surveying and recording and to check accuracy of recorded facts. Clarification of present problems and establishment of the proposal will involve close, cooperation among engineers, lawyers, title abstractors, and legislators.