Property Rights
Easement Types, Creation and Termination
Creation by long use, the length of the period required, recording consequences and the survey standards that reveal an unrecorded right are all matters of state law. Use this page for the framework and your own state's statutes and commission material for any number or procedure.
An easement is a right to use land that somebody else owns, for a stated purpose, without owning it. The owner keeps the parcel and keeps every use that does not interfere; the holder gets one carved-out privilege that the owner cannot revoke at will.
Exam items on this subject sort along two axes: who benefits from the right, and how the right came into existence. Answer those two questions and most items resolve themselves, including the ones written as neighbor disputes.
Two Questions That Classify Any Easement
First ask who holds the benefit. If the benefit attaches to a neighboring parcel and travels with that parcel when it changes hands, the right is appurtenant. If the benefit attaches to a person or a company with no parcel behind it, the right is in gross. That single question separates the two families the exam uses most.
Then ask how it came about. Written grant or reservation is the cleanest origin. Courts also recognize rights that nobody wrote down, either because the layout of a divided parcel implied them, because access would otherwise be impossible, or because someone used the strip openly for long enough that the law stopped protecting the owner's objection.
Keep a third question in reserve for scenario items: does the use interfere with anything else? An easement is a limited right, and a holder who expands it beyond the purpose granted can be enjoined. A driveway right does not become a parking right because parking would be convenient.
Key Easement Types
The vocabulary below is tested directly. Learn the pairs together, because items are usually written to see whether you can tell the members of a pair apart.
Easement Appurtenant
A right that one parcel holds over a neighboring parcel. Because the benefit belongs to the land rather than to its current owner, a later buyer of the benefited parcel takes the right without a fresh grant, and a buyer of the burdened parcel takes it subject to the same obligation.
Easement in Gross
A right held personally rather than on behalf of an adjoining parcel. Utility corridors and outdoor advertising rights are the standard illustrations. Commercial rights of this kind are usually transferable; a purely personal one generally ends with the holder.
Express Easement
A right the parties put in writing, either by granting it in a conveyance or by reserving it when a seller parts with part of a holding. It states the purpose and location, it records, and it is the least likely form to produce litigation.
Implied Easement
A right a court finds without a writing, because a single holding was split at a time when one part was visibly and continuously serving the other, and that arrangement was reasonably necessary to the part now claiming it.
Easement by Necessity
A right imposed so that a parcel with no route to a public way can reach one across the land it was severed from. Courts allow it because leaving ground unreachable serves nobody, and it typically lasts only while the lack of access does.
Prescriptive Easement
A right earned by using someone else's ground visibly, without permission, and without interruption for the period the state sets. Nothing is paid and no title changes; what the user gains is the continued use, not ownership of the strip.
Dominant Tenement
The parcel on the receiving end of an appurtenant right. Its owner is the one entitled to exercise the use, and ordinarily the one expected to keep the affected area serviceable.
Servient Tenement
The parcel that carries the burden. Its owner still holds title to the ground and may use it for anything that does not obstruct the permitted use, which is why fences and structures over the strip generate disputes.
Ways an Easement Comes to an End
Rights of this kind are durable but not permanent. Each ending below has a trigger, and items are usually written by describing the trigger and asking for its name.
The holder gives it up in writing, discharging the burden on the other parcel.
Both parcels end up with the same owner. Nobody needs a right over ground they already own, so the arrangement dissolves, and it does not revive automatically if the parcels are later separated again.
The holder walks away from it in a manner that shows intent to quit. Simply not using the strip for a stretch of years rarely suffices on its own; courts look for conduct inconsistent with keeping the right.
A term written into the grant runs out, or a stated condition occurs.
The improvement the right existed to serve is destroyed, as with a stairway or party wall whose building is gone.
A public taking of the burdened parcel wipes it out, with compensation questions handled under the condemnation rules.
The roles reverse: the burdened owner blocks the use openly and continuously for the statutory period, extinguishing by the same mechanism that can create a right.
The purpose becomes impossible or the necessity that justified a necessity-based right disappears, for instance when the landlocked parcel gains its own frontage.
Practical and Exam Questions
Will a title search reveal every easement on a parcel?
No. Rights created by a recorded writing show up in the chain of title. Rights arising from long use or from the circumstances of a split may exist without appearing anywhere in the records, which is one reason a survey and a physical inspection matter and why title policies address off-record rights separately.
May the burdened owner build across the area?
Only where the structure leaves the permitted use intact, which in practice rules out most permanent construction. Obstructing a utility corridor or an access strip typically ends with a removal order at the builder's expense, and a buyer who inherits the obstruction inherits the problem.
Who pays to keep the affected strip usable?
The party benefiting from the right, unless the document says otherwise. Well-drafted agreements allocate maintenance and repair in advance, which is worth checking when several parcels share one drive.
How is a license different?
A license is permission, not property. It can be pulled back by the owner, it usually ends when the owner sells, and it does not bind later buyers. An easement is an interest in the land itself, survives a sale of either parcel, and cannot be withdrawn because the owner changed their mind.
Can the holder relocate or widen the use?
Not unilaterally in most circumstances. The scope is fixed by how the right was created, and a holder who expands the burden invites an injunction. Relocation ordinarily requires agreement between the parties, sometimes recorded as a replacement document.
What is a party wall, and how does it fit here?
A shared wall sitting on the boundary between two owners, with each holding rights in the half serving the other. It is commonly analyzed as mutual appurtenant rights, and the cost of upkeep is shared unless an agreement divides it differently.