Gorge Journal · Land Records
A Kentucky partition suit usually ends with a surveyor walking the ground, but the statute contains an exception that can skip that step entirely. KRS 381.135(6) requires a registered land surveyor to perform the actual survey of the land and seal the resulting descriptions, maps and plats — “unless such actual survey and the resultant description, maps, plats, and documents pertaining to this land are already in existence.” On Red River Gorge acreage, where old surveys and family divisions are common, that clause decides whether the line you are buying was drawn this year or decades ago.
Does a Kentucky partition always require a new survey?
No. Subsection (6) calls for a registered land surveyor’s sealed work, but it releases that requirement where the actual survey and its descriptions, maps, plats and documents already exist for the land.
Read in order, the subsection does three things. The commissioners “shall equitably determine the allotment to the parties of their respective interests in the land.” A registered land surveyor then performs the actual survey “in accordance with the determination made by the commissioners,” and prepares the descriptions including all related maps, plats and documents. Only then comes the exception. So the commissioners always decide the division; the surveyor’s new fieldwork is what the exception can displace, and only when an existing survey already describes the same allotment.
Who has to perform and seal the survey?
A registered land surveyor, personally. The statute requires that person to prepare the descriptions, maps, plats and documents and “affix thereto his personal seal and signature” — a named professional, not the commissioners.
Registration in Kentucky is administered by the Kentucky Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, which licenses surveyors and publishes a licensee lookup. The seal is the part a buyer can verify years later without reading the court file: it tells you who is answerable for the line. Our broader note on what a survey does and does not settle when buying Gorge land covers what to ask for before you rely on one.
What has to be “already in existence” for the exception to apply?
All of it. The exception is written over the whole package — the actual survey and the resultant description, maps, plats and documents pertaining to the land — not over a plat alone or a deed description alone.
That phrasing matters on hill ground. A 1970s family division may have produced a deed description with no plat; a subdivision plat may exist with no survey of the specific allotment the commissioners just determined. Either gap puts you back inside the general rule, because the subsection reads as a single bundle. The practical question in a partition file is therefore narrow: does an existing, sealed survey describe the same division the commissioners reported, or merely some earlier division of the same tract?
The exception does not say a survey is unnecessary. It says one already exists — which means somewhere in the record there is a sealed document your title work has to find.
What happens to the survey after the court confirms the report?
It becomes a recorded document. Subsection (8) directs that a confirmed report, together with the surveyor’s descriptions and survey, all related documents and the applicable deeds, be certified by the circuit clerk to the county clerk for record.
Subsection (7) comes first: once the report is confirmed, a commissioner appointed for the purpose conveys the allotted land to each party by deed. The court retains the power under subsection (6) to “either confirm, set aside, or remand the report to the commissioners for correction,” so confirmation is the hinge for everything downstream. The sequence for a buyer is simple to check: commissioners’ report, confirmation order, commissioner’s deed, and the survey package certified over to the county clerk. Our walk-through of how to object to a commissioners’ report covers the window before that confirmation closes.
Why this matters when you buy Gorge land out of a partition
When land in Lee, Wolfe, Powell or Estill County comes to market after a family partition, the deed you are offered is often a commissioner’s deed, and the description in it traces back to whichever survey the court accepted. If the exception was used, the controlling survey is older than the lawsuit — and old survey calls on steep ground are exactly where acreage disagreements live. My own habit on any partition-sourced parcel is to ask for the survey by name and date before talking about price, because the document either exists in the county clerk’s records or it does not, and that answer costs nothing to get. Buying from co-owners before any suit is filed raises a separate set of questions, which we covered in buying Red River Gorge land from heirs.
Can the commissioners decide the line without any surveyor?
The commissioners determine the allotment, but subsection (6) assigns the actual survey and the sealed descriptions, maps and plats to a registered land surveyor unless that work already exists for the land.
Who pays for the survey in a Kentucky partition?
KRS 381.135 addresses costs in its later subsections rather than in subsection (6). Ask the attorney handling the action how costs are being taxed in that specific case before assuming who carries the surveyor’s fee.
How current is this version of the statute?
The version published by the Legislative Research Commission carries an effective date of July 15, 1998, from 1998 Ky. Acts ch. 316, sec. 1. Always open the statute itself before relying on it.
Source: KRS 381.135, Division of land or allotment of dower or curtesy, Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Effective July 15, 1998 (amended 1998 Ky. Acts ch. 316, sec. 1). Read October 21, 2026. A records explainer, not legal advice.
Last updated October 21, 2026.
By Marcos Gil, REALTOR® — Keller Williams Commonwealth · KY Real Estate License No. 296259 · Call or text (859) 310-1209.
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