A legal description is a detailed way of describing a parcel of land for documents such as deeds and mortgages that will be accepted in a court of law.
The description is based on information collected through a survey, the process by which boundaries are measured by calculating the dimensions and area to determine the exact location of a piece of land.
Courts have stated that a description is legally sufficient if it allows a surveyor to locate the parcel. In this context, locate means that the surveyor must be able to define the exact boundaries of the property. A street address will not tell a surveyor how large the property is or where it begins and ends.
Several alternative systems of identification have been developed to express a legal description of real estate.
METHODS OF DESCRIBING REAL ESTATE
Three basic methods can be used to describe real estate:
- Metes and bounds
- Rectangular (or government) survey
- Lot and block (recorded plat)
Although each method can be used independently, the methods may be combined in some situations. Some states use only one method; others use all three.
Metes-and-bounds descriptions were used in the original thirteen colonies and in those states that were being settled while the rectangular survey system was being developed. Today, as technology allows for greater precision and expanded record keeping, there is greater integration of land description information.
Metes-and-Bounds Method
The metes-and-bounds method is the oldest type of legal description. Metes means distance, and bounds means compass directions or angles. A metes-and-bounds description always starts at a designated place on the parcel, called the point of beginning (POB). From there, the surveyor proceeds around the property’s boundaries. The boundaries are recorded by referring to linear measurements, natural and artificial landmarks (called monuments), and directions. A metes-and-bounds description always ends back at the POB so that the tract being described is completely enclosed.
Monuments are fixed objects used to identify the POB, the ends of boundary segments, or the location of intersecting boundaries. A monument may be a natural object, such as a stone, large tree, lake, or stream. It may also be a man-made object, such as a street, highway, fence, canal, or markers (iron pins or concrete posts) placed by surveyors. Measurements often include the words “more or less” because the location of the monuments is more important than the distances given in the wording. In other words, the actual distance between monuments takes precedence over any linear measurements in the description.
Metes-and-bounds descriptions are used in Illinois when describing irregular tracts, portions of a recorded lot, or fractions of a section. Such descriptions always incorporate the rectangular survey method and refer to the section, township, range, and principal meridian of the land.
Rectangular (Government) Survey System
The rectangular survey system, sometimes called the government survey system, was established by Congress in 1785 to standardize the description of land acquired by the newly formed federal
government. This system is based on two sets of intersecting lines: principal meridians and base lines.
Some features of the Rectangular Survey System :
- The principal meridians run north and south.
- The base lines run east and west.
- Both are located by reference to degrees of longitude and latitude.
- Each principal meridian has a name or number and is crossed by a base line.
- Each principal meridian and its corresponding base line are used to survey a definite area of land, indicated on the map by boundary lines.
- There are 37 principal meridians in the United States.
- Each principal meridian describes only specific areas of land by boundaries.
- No parcel of land is described by reference to more than one principal meridian.
- The meridian used is not necessarily the nearest one.
Locations in Illinois are described by their relation to one of three meridians — 2, 3 and 4. Note that only two of these three meridians actually run through Illinois (3 and 4), but nevertheless all are sometimes referenced in legal descriptions for Illinois properties.
The Second Principal Meridian is located in Indiana and controls that portion of Illinois lying south and east of Kankakee.
The Third Principal Meridian begins at Cairo, at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and extends northward toward Wisconsin and near Rockford to the Illinois-Wisconsin border.
The Fourth Principal Meridian begins near Beardstown and extends northward to the Canadian border. Surveys of land located in the western portion of Illinois use a base line for the Fourth Principal Meridian at Beardstown.
Surveys of land in Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota are made from the Fourth Principal Meridian using a base line that is on the Illinois-Wisconsin border.
Not all property is described by reference to the nearest principal meridian. A property on the western border of the Third Principal Meridian and just west of Rockford will be described by reference to the Fourth Principal Meridian. There are no options with regard to the meridians and base lines used to describe a particular property; once made, a legal description is not changed.
Further divisions are used in the same way as monuments in the metes-and-bounds method. They are:
- townships,
- ranges,
- sections, and
- quarter-section lines.
