My father in law bought the adjacent 43 acres to my ranch (the old "la casita" thread on the other forum). My FIL had some money burning a hole in his pocket, and the nice lady neighbor was looking to sell (we bought our original ranch from her and get along great). She get the money she needed and we got to control the use, rather then ending up with the next door property being some junkyard or whatever. She sold off to my FIL 43 acres, but really we just want about 18ac of it (the pretty wooded part on both sides of the creek so we don't need water gates and such). But it was one of those deals where my FIL had to buy the whole 43 acres right then, and figure out the rest later. It has a nice 25 acre field that is good for a couple cuttings of hay each year. But a denuded field is not great for use for us. We just want to putter around and drink beer, not be worries about fertilizing a field and working out deals to have someone with a tractor cut hay.
Other neighbor could use it for his hobby cattle raising - he can finish off non-weaned calves and check up on them daily. That's fine with us, and he'd be a good steward for the land as well. He suggested a land swap, FILs 25 acres for a similar amount from his proverbial back forty. Seems a fair deal and a win-win; our 25 acres is more useful to him for honest agricultural production, and his ~25 is nicely wooded and would fit in well with the hunting property we have (we do wildlife ag exemption).
The issue is that freshly broken off a piece of neighbor's property would be "landlocked" (it would not have frontage or a deeded easement to the country road). Technically FILs new 43 acres, once you cut off that 25 acre field, would become landlocked as well. Not actually a problem, since I intend to buy the remaining 18 acres (and I guess that 25ac as well) and unify the whole tract. But that's probably can't happen the same day the land swap closing would happen.
Would this kind of deal run into the TX common law principle against landlocked property? To be clear: we have no interest in any implied easement or whatever, I just don't want this vaguely recalled legal precept to screw up what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward deal.
(I'll try to whip up a MS paint diagram tomorrow)