Easements

A right to use, never to own

An easement is an encumbrance — someone else's legal right carved out of an owner's bundle of rights. The easement holder gets a defined, limited use of the land: crossing it, running pipes under it, keeping a view over it. What they never get is possession or title. That single distinction — use without ownership — is the definition the exam tests, and it's what separates an easement from a lease (which conveys possession) and from ownership itself.

Appurtenant vs. in gross

An easement appurtenant involves two neighboring parcels. The parcel that benefits is the dominant tenement; the parcel that carries the burden is the servient tenement. Because the right attaches to the land itself, it transfers automatically whenever the dominant parcel is sold — the classic example is a driveway easement crossing a neighbor's lot to reach the road.

An easement in gross benefits a person or entity rather than a parcel, so only one property is involved — there's a servient tenement but no dominant one. Utility easements are the textbook case: the power company's right to run lines across private lots belongs to the company, not to any neighboring land.

How easements are created — and ended

Most easements are created deliberately, by express grant in a deed or by reservation when a seller keeps a right over land they're conveying. Courts create the rest: an easement by necessity when a parcel is landlocked (the law refuses to strand property without access), an easement by implication from prior obvious use, and an easement by prescription when someone uses land openly, continuously, and without permission for the statutory period.

Easements end by release, by merger (one party acquires both parcels — you can't hold an easement over your own land), by abandonment, or by the stated purpose ending. Knowing merger exists earns points: if the dominant owner buys the servient parcel, the easement is extinguished automatically.

How it appears on the exam

Easement questions are scenario questions. A landlocked buyer needs access (necessity), a neighbor has crossed the back lot for twenty years (prescription), a utility company maintains lines through the subdivision (in gross). Your job is to name the type — then, if two parcels are involved, to say which is dominant and which is servient. Work it in that order and the distractors fall away.