News, North, South Carolina to Get New Border—Their Old One. (house, legal)

[John1960]

Untangling a Border Could Leave a Mess for Some.

CLOVER, S.C. — Errors can compound over time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/us...r-borders.html

[jtur88]

From what I understand, the lady in the story has a pretty good legal case to have her residence kept in South Carolina. US courts have ruled so many times, that it is common law, that a state line is legally wherever ongoing custom says it is. This situation has arisen many times, with technical improvements over the centuries in survey accuracy, and as far as I know, the courts have never upheld a movement of a state line merely because a new survey showed that it was misplaced.

If her house can legally be declared to be in a different state from where she thinks it is, huge areas in the USA, of hundreds of square miles, could be shifted from one state to another according to GPS measurements. Almost every state line would be moved hundreds of feet and in some cases, many miles. Like all those big notches in the KY/TN and CT/MA borders.

[Mutiny77]

They will grandfather folks in whose residences and businesses have been regarded as being in one state but is actually in the other according to the newly-drawn boundary.