Determining Land Ownership and Access Rights
DISCLAIMER
Before purchasing, review the rules of your licensing or certifying entity. It is your responsibility to confirm this course meets your CE requirements. See the credit tab on the course page for details.
What’s Included: Full webinar recording, written course materials, expert instruction, a mandatory quiz, and a certificate upon completion.
Deliverability Timeline: All courses are generally available within 1-2 weeks after the live presentation.
CE Credits: AIA and/or LA/CES accreditation is available by request for courses recorded prior to March 11, 2026. All courses after that date include those accreditations by default, if applicable. With these accreditations, our courses qualify for credit in nearly all states for engineers, surveyors, architects, and landscape architects.
Learn more about the on-demand format in our FAQ or contact us at (715) 835-5900 or customerservice@halfmoonseminars.org
Agenda
Registration: 8:00 – 8:30 am
Morning Session: 8:30 – 11:45 am
Lunch (On your own): 11:45 am – 12:45 pm
Afternoon Session: 12:45 – 4:30 pm
Locating Land Boundaries on Paper (And on the Ground)
What a deed tells us about real property interests and
their locations – or doesn’t
Common kinds of land descriptions in New Jersey:
• Metes and bounds • Reference to a subdivision
• Reference to a tax parcel • “Strip” descriptions
• 3-D descriptions (condominiums, split estates)
• Blanket easements
Reading a description to find evidence of location
The work involved in writing a description
Tying the paper deed to the ground: What is evidence of a boundary?
Why paper and ground may not match
When the paper and the ground don’t match:
The hierarchy of evidence in descriptions
Summary: Elements of a good description
Easements: Understanding Possessive Rights in Lands of Others
Distinctions between ownership and possession
Easements distinguished from other possessory rights
Types of easements and distinctions between them:
Appurtenant, in gross, affirmative, negative, and others
Methods of easement creation
Clues in documents to determine if interests are fee or easement
The effect of the Statute of Frauds on possessory rights
Methods of easement termination
What happens after termination?
Defining Trespass and Adverse Possession
Defining trespass
Distinctions between trespass, adverse possession,
and prescriptive rights
Maintaining adverse claims
• Statute of limitations • Elements of a claim
• “Lost grant” claims • Quiet title actions
Understanding Riparian and Water Rights
The Public Trust Doctrine and riparian rights
Locating land boundaries near the water line
Determining access rights to surface waters
Determining rights to groundwater
Water-related regulations affecting land use and land ownership in NJ
Avoiding, Identifying and Resolving Ethical
Issues in Land Transactions and Disputes
Conflicts of interest: identifying your client
What duties do you owe, and to whom do you owe them?
Complying with your professional responsibility for honesty
and truthfulness
Practicing only in areas of competence
Ethical solicitation of business
Taking referrals from other professionals
Non-litigious approaches to settling land interest disputes:
• Practical location and boundary line agreements
• Boundary line commissions
Credits
Attorneys
7.8 New Jersey CLE Hours
(1.2 Ethics)
7.5 New York CLE Hours
(1.0 Ethics)
6.5 Pennsylvania CLE Hours
(1.0 Ethics)
NJ Title Insurance Producers
6.0 CE Credits
Professional Land Surveyors
6.5 PDHs
Professional Engineers
6.5 CE Hours,
Including 1.0 Ethics Hour
Continuing Education Credit Information
This seminar is open to the public. The New Jersey Board on Continuing Legal Education has approved it for 7.8 CLE hours, including 1.2 Ethics hours for attorneys.The New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance has approved this course for 6.0 credits for insurance producers.
The New Jersey State Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors has approved this program for 6.5 PDHs for land surveyors and 6.5 PDHs, including 1.0 ethics hour, for professional engineers (New Jersey Provider Approval No. 24GP00000700).
HalfMoon Education is certified by the New York State CLE Board as an Accredited Provider of CLE programs. This traditional format course offers 7.5 Areas of Professional Practice CLE hours suitable for new and experienced attorneys.
This event has also been approved by the Pennsylvania CLE Board for a total of 6.5 CLE hours, which includes 5.5 substantive hours and 1.0 ethics hour for attorneys.
Speakers
Wendy Lathrop, PLS, CFM, CFS
President and Owner of Cadastral Consulting, LLCMs. Lathrop is licensed as a professional land surveyor in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, and as a professional planner in New Jersey. She holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and has been involved in surveying since 1974 in projects ranging from construction to boundary to environmental land use disputes. Ms. Lathrop is also a certified floodplain manager through the Association of State Flood Plain Managers (ASFPM) and a certified floodplain surveyor through the New Jersey Society of Professional Land Surveyors. A former adjunct instructor at Mercer County College in New Jersey, she has also taught as part of the team for the licensing exam review course at Drexel University in Pennsylvania. Ms. Lathrop has been teaching seminars for surveyors since 1986 and has been writing articles for surveyors since 1983. She is a contributing editor for The American Surveyor magazine, and she has four articles included in the American Bar Association’s text, Land Surveys: A Guide for Lawyers and Other Professionals. She and Stephen V. Estopinal, PLS, PE co–authored a book entitled Professional Surveyors and Real Property Descriptions: Composition, Construction, and Comprehension, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in 2011. She is also on the faculty of GeoLearn, a web-based educational provider. Ms. Lathrop is a past president of the New Jersey Society of Professional Land Surveyors and of the National Society of Professional Surveyors, and she has served on the Board of Directors for the American Association for Geodetic Surveying.
