parties to “find” (by mind reading) an ambiguity in the description can The Court get around this rule. Had Stribling been applied in this case, The 1927 Deed would have been found to have been definite and unambiguous in its description of the conveyed lands and the 2008 Boundary Stipulation would have been declared a void correction deed which could not be ratified ( Rule of Law No. 5 – Ratification of a Void Instrument ). Further, Mrs. Ellison would have had her record title confirmed in her as a matter of law. All because this Court would not follow stare decisis in yet again another case whose antecedents reach back to 1891. Now long settled recorded legal titles to real property, based on a new faulty rule that allows the parties (or their successors and assigns) to the original instrument to subjectively believe that there is an ambiguity in the property description found in the original instrument, will be subjected to potentially increased and unwarranted litigation where there is an acreage call differing from that amount of acreage described in the original instrument by metes and bounds. This was not the law until Ellison.
“As noted, the court of appeals described the boundary stipulation as “close in nature to a ‘correction deed’ in which a party seeks to retroactively ‘correct the defects and imperfections’ of the original deed.” 609 S.W.3d at 561 [quoting Myrad Props., Inc. v. LaSalle Bank Nat’l Ass’n , 300 S.W.3d 746, 750 (Tex. 2009)]. Unlike correction deeds, which are governed by Texas Property Code sections 5.027–.030, the boundary stipulation does not purport to “replace” either the 1927 deed or the 1930 deed. Tex. Prop. Code § 5.030(b). It is an agreement between owners of adjacent property regarding the location of the boundary between their tracts, and nothing in the statutory provisions governing correction deeds affects the validity of such an agreement.” 24 Nowhere in Texas jurisprudence does the term “boundary stipulation” show up as a legal term except in the reported Appeals Court/Supreme Court opinions in this case. Does that mean, going forward, any instrument that contains words of grant, a clearly identified grantor/grantee, and claims to retroactively “clarify” an (erroneously- claimed) “ ambiguous” or “uncertain” description in an earlier deed will no longer be subject to analysis/scrutiny and potential classification as an impermissible form of retroactive correction deed, but instead may/must be categorized as merely an always-valid “boundary stipulation”? Unknown . As applied to this case, the proper inquiry should have been initially whether the description of the lands made the basis of this litigation as described in the 1927 Deed (Deed found at Volume 17, Page 118 of the Irion County Deed Records) was ambiguous. (See below discussion on Correction Deeds.) That is, once the 147 acreage call was eliminated under Wooten and Stribling, were the lands specifically described (“…All of Survey 1, Block 6, H.&T.C. Ry. Co. lands located North and West of the public road which now runs across the corner of said Survey…”) and locatable such that, as a matter of law, there was no ambiguity or indefiniteness in said description?
Rule of Law No. 4 – Correction Deed Analysis
A. Ambiguity
As indicated in Rule of Law No. 1 above, if the 2008 Boundary Stipulation is not a deed/ conveyance (at a minimum a quitclaim deed), then the thousands of stipulation instruments executed over generations in the oil and gas business as well as estate distribution deeds may well be declared NOT to be conveyances. The Court somehow had to reach a legal conclusion that the 2008 Boundary Stipulation was not a deed. Otherwise, the following analysis would have been applicable. Key to this Court’s decision is its insistence that the 2008 Boundary Stipulation is not a deed/conveyance. The Court classified the 2008 Boundary Stipulation as a “boundary stipulation”, not a conveyance.
Specifically, in Footnote 11 of The Court’s
[24] Concho Resources, Inc. et al. v. Ellison, 627 S.W.3d. 226, 235 (Tex. 2021)
opinion , it was noted:
25
G rowth T hrough E ducat i on - J uly / A ugus t / S ept ember 2024
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