Addressing What Matters: Addresses Change (Part 2)

North Carolina and South Carolina are friendly neighbors.? There are no major rivalries except those associated with (American) Football and Barbeque.? But you would never have guessed there was peace and harmony between these good neighbors when they decided the fix what wasn’t really broken - their border.

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The original border between North Carolina and South Carolina was established in the 1700s using physical markers like stones and marked trees.? Over time, this 334-mile long border deteriorated and the markers disappeared.? So in 1995, a Joint Boundary Commission was formed that used modern GPS technology and historical research to re-survey the border.? In 2015, they finally concluded their work.

In the unnecessarily dogmatic spirit of “we’ve started so we should finish”, on January 1, 2017, both states officially adopted the re-surveyed boundaries through executive orders and legislation. This resulted in 47 properties now occupying both states, 4 residences moving from NC into SC and 15 residences moving from SC into NC.? In addition, 7 commercial or institutional buildings were split and 2 commercial addresses changed state.

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Now the pragmatic part of me acknowledges this is a tiny percentage of address that have been affected and as a geospatial professional, of course the boundary needs to be in the right place.?

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But the compassionate part of me screams “this is literally irrelevant, it helps nobody”.? You see the effects of a change in their address from one state to another may seem as trivial as switching North or South - heck, even the ZIP code will stay the same because it’s one of those 200 that crosses state lines. But the impacts of this are actually quite massive.

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Some of the changes the affected addresses now need to contend with are: property tax, property title, school attendance, driver’s licenses, college tuition, motor vehicle titles and taxes and insurance, utilities, foreclosure process, fire protection, wills, trusts, investments, company registrations, benefits, healthcare coverage, doctors availability and so on and so forth. For those outside the US, it's hard to understand that each state is kind of like a different country from a legal perspective, but trust me it is.

So while I said this change helps nobody, that might not be true.? It seems to me that a small number of lawyers could make a considerable fortune helping this community deal with the ramifications of their newly changed addresses.? And who doesn’t love to hear about that?

I will just go double check who sponsored the legislation....