Townships and Ranges in Wyoming

After working in the “vault” of the Johnson County Courthouse for four days recently, I have renewed respect for our legal teams at the Settlement houses in our real estate world. Johnson County, Wyoming, works from Township and Range descriptions, rather than the lot and block language that is employed in more densely populated districts. The context is the same, however.

It sure is easy to make a mistake, after going through the mind-numbing NW quarter of the North Half of Section 33, Township 49, Range 77, and wondering if you really meant to say it a different way. Sometimes, the shorthand property description is written NW4N2 and sometimes it’s simply NEN2. When it’s written out in long hand, the chances for error go sky high. 

In that environment, we discovered an incidental “cloud on the title,” on some land we own. Our neighbor, a long time ago, re-titled a lot of land that surrounds us, and part of our land, from himself and his wife into a Living Trust, trustees being himself and his wife. Then in subsequent years, they sold the land. Those owners sold to someone else and and someone else and now they have sold out to the last and final owner. 

Our mission is to inform the next neighbor that they have a defective title, having sustained a mistake when they bought the land. It was the duty of the Title Insurance company and the settlement company to search the title adequately. It’s not hard to see the error. The Title company missed this one for sure. Now they are on the hook for the damages.

In a case like this, they can turn to their title insurance to compensate them for the damage. We hope they have title insurance.

The remedy is the “Quiet Title” which results, I think, in a “Quit Claim” deed.