Legal Descriptions, Deeds, and Conveyance Interpretation: Ambiguity and Reformation
Anatomy of a deed
A deed needs parties, words of grant, a sufficient description, execution and acknowledgment where required, and delivery with intent. Recording protects against later purchasers but is not what makes a deed valid between the parties. The granting clause controls over the habendum and the testimonium when they conflict.
Description sufficiency
The controlling maxim is that a description is sufficient if it can be made certain by reference to something extrinsic. A description that cannot identify the land at all is void; one that fits two or more parcels equally is ambiguous. Patent ambiguity appears on the face of the instrument; latent ambiguity appears only when the description is applied to the ground, and extrinsic evidence is admissible to resolve it. Reformation addresses mutual mistake or scrivener's error, not one party's regret.
Interpretation tools
The whole instrument is read together. Specific descriptions control general recitals. A call to a monument controls a call to distance. Exceptions and reservations are construed narrowly and in favor of the grantee. The strip-and-gore doctrine can pass narrow leftover strips with the abutting land in some jurisdictions. The rule of intention controls, and the grantor's selection of language is construed against the grantor.
Worked example
A deed conveys "the west 100 feet of Lot 4, containing 2 acres, more or less." Lot 4 is 150 feet wide and 1.8 acres total. The specific linear call controls; the acreage and "more or less" yield. The grantee receives the west 100 feet, whatever its computed area.
Traps
Void versus voidable; "subject to" (does not reserve) versus "excepting" (reserves); "more or less" does not void a distance; a deed that reserves an unstated strip is not automatically void. Read the words the grantor chose.