Source: https://vltaexaminer.com/2017/09/22/title-tips-by-tute/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 01:45:40+00:00

Document:
He was a legend in his own mind.
Someone, somewhere, must think I am slipping. Losing my marbles. Past my prime. Make up your own phrase. They sent me to title examination class! For day after insufferable day after excruciatingly painfully repetitious day. Not that your author, in their own humble opinion, thinks title exam training is a bad thing. It is a great thing . . . for other people. Especially new people. Especially that guy I saw in, oh, you might know him, never mind.
These are variations of a metes and bounds description, once removed. Just as a description by reference to a subdivision plat incorporates the courses and distances drawn on the plat into the deed of conveyance, these derived descriptions incorporate the boundary lines from the adjoining owners’ deeds (or deeds in their chain of title) into the deed description. Which means the examiner has to read the adjoiner’s deeds to find out how those lines were described.
Providence Properties, Inc. v. United Virginia Bank/Seaboard National, Trustee, 219 Va. 735 VA. (1979), which the court reiterated in Spainhour v. B. Aubrey Huffman & Assoc., 237 Va. 340 (1989). While that list favors monuments (and what is a surveyor’s corner pin, but an artificial monument?), adjacent boundaries come right behind that, perhaps due to another Court decision ruling an adjoining owner’s lines, when the location is certain, is a monument of the highest dignity. Richmond Cedar Works v. West, 152 Va. 533 (1930).
[W]here a senior patentee settles upon any portion of his land claiming title to the whole, whether inside or outside of the interlock, before the junior patentee has settled upon any part of the interlock, the senior patentee is in possession to the extent of his grant, and a subsequent entry of the junior patentee upon the interlock only ousts the senior patentee to the extent of the land actually in the occupancy of the junior patentee by residence, improvement, cultivation, or other open, notorious and habitual acts of ownership.” Smith v. The Pittston Company, 203 Va. 408, 413-414, 124 S.E.2d 1, ___ (1962).
This repeats the holdings in earlier cases such as LaDue v. Currell, 201 Va. 200 (1959), Baldwin v. Mothena, 171 Va. 94 (1938), and Fry v. Stowers, 98 Va. 417 (1900).
If the Court can identify the boundaries, the first conveyance is almost always going to prevail over the second conveyance (first in time is first in right). So if that first conveyance included 10′ of what was also described in the second conveyance, the second purchaser has a problem. Which means our employers have a problem.
Let’s make sure we are not the problem and let’s be careful out there.
Title Tips by TUTE is a regular feature in the VLTA Examiner. TUTE offers interesting & informative questions & answers pertinent to title examiners & underwriters. TUTE may be reached at www.tute.us. We encourage our readers to submit their questions or comments to TUTE c/o the VLTA examiner.

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