“Is My Property Line Off?” The Common Grantor Doctrine

Maybe you are in the process of buying a home. Maybe you have lived there for years. At some point, you might have asked yourself is that fence really on the actual property line? Figuring out where your land ends and your neighbor’s begins can be more complex than you think. The recent Washington Court of Appeals decision Kirkwood v. Nelson illustrates the difficulty of figuring out exactly what constitutes your property. This case highlights a powerful but often-overlooked real estate rule known as the “Common Grantor Doctrine.” The Common Grantor Doctrine can legally alter your property lines based on a physical barrier, such as a fence or other demarcation, regardless of your deed terms.

In Kirkwood, a landowner in Moses Lake split his property into two adjacent lots separated by an existing wooden fence. The owner sold the northern lot to Barry Kirkwood. Kirkwood treated the fence as his boundary line and used the enclosed area for a horse-riding pasture. A few months later, the owner sold the southern lot to James and Sumer Nelson. Crucially, both buyers received standard warranty deeds with formal legal descriptions omitting any mention of the encroaching fence. When a subsequent land survey revealed the fence’s 8 to 10 feet encroachment onto the Nelson lot, a dispute erupted. The Nelsons demanded Kirkwood move the fence, and Kirkwood responded by suing to legally establish the fence as the true property line. The court ruled in Kirkwood’s favor. The ruling stripped the Nelsons of that 8-to-10-foot strip of land which they owned according to their deed.

So, how did the court decide that a wooden fence overrides the terms of a recorded deed? It came down to two simple factors: behavior and appearance. Relying on the Common Grantor Doctrine, the court noted that a formal written contract isn’t required to change a property line. Instead, the original owner’s everyday actions (e.g. showing Kirkwood how to run the pasture lights wired to the fence) proved they both treated the fence as the real boundary. On top of that, Kirkwood’s side of the yard was highly developed while the neighbor’s side was completely barren. To anyone looking at the land, the fence was the obvious, unmistakable property line. Ultimately, this means you or a previous owner may have already legally locked in a boundary line through everyday actions without even realizing it.

Boundary lines are often an afterthought for homeowners, until they aren’t. A case like Kirkwood demonstrates that a clean record title does not give you an absolute guarantee of what you own. Physical structures on the ground and the historical conduct of prior owners can quietly rewrite your property lines over time. If you rely solely on a standard deed description without looking closely at the physical history of the land, you could end up losing a valuable portion of land.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.