Boundary Surveying and Legal Principles
This domain tests how well you retrace Michigan's Public Land Survey System (PLSS) corners, apply Michigan remonumentation law, and resolve water and unwritten boundaries. Expect questions that supply record and measured evidence and ask what controls.
Original government corners
Michigan was surveyed from the Michigan Meridian (roughly 84°48′ W) beginning about 1815. Original GLO evidence - bearing trees, mounds, stones, wooden posts - outranks every other kind of evidence. A corner is existent if the original monument or its remains can be identified; obliterated if its position can be proven by collateral evidence; lost only when both fail. Proportionate measurement is a last resort applied between the nearest reliable controlling corners, never as a way to "correct" a found original monument.
Remonumentation
Act 345 of 1990, the Survey and Remonumentation Act, funds county programs through a statutory recording fee collected at the register of deeds and requires filing of corner records when corners are established or reestablished. County remonumentation records are persuasive but do not replace original GLO evidence.
Water and unwritten rights
Michigan holds Great Lakes bottomlands in trust; the boundary is the ordinary high water mark, not the meander line. Accretion and reliction belong to the riparian owner; avulsion does not move the line. Inland lake plats often convey to the water, so read the plat and Michigan riparian case law. Long occupation can establish a boundary by acquiescence, and adverse possession in Michigan runs 15 years.
Worked example
A record calls 40.00 chains from an existent section corner to a lost quarter corner, and you measure 40.30 chains between the two existent controlling corners. Set the lost corner by single proportion: (40.00 ÷ 40.30) × the measured position from the controlling corner. The record distance is evidence of position, not a measurement to be forced onto the ground.
Traps
Proportioning an existent corner; treating a meander line as a boundary; accepting a found pipe without checking its record character and position; ignoring acquiescence or adverse possession.