Easements Misunderstood
By Jim Palmer Jr.

Frequently there are misunderstandings concerning easements such as; can the easement be gated or can the road be widened, is there really an easement there?  In a recent case a landowner put up a cable across a road in order to stop travel through their property because they didn’t understand the nature of the easement, which also benefited their property.  This action caused significant grief for the landowner that relied on this road as their only access.  Now the aggrieved landowner is in the position of fighting a legal battle they had not anticipated.

In another case, a burdened land owner became irate when the benefited land owner began cutting down all of the trees within the specified width of the easement.  Did that person have the right to clear that easement corridor?  Who owns the trees?  Of course common sense would tell you that the burdened landowner owns the trees and the land underneath the easement.  Even though it would have been neighborly to let the land owner know about the tree cutting ahead of time, the benefited property owner had every right to clear that path and to keep it free of obstructions. 

In both of these cases the reaction of the burdened land owners suggests a fundamental lack of understanding about the nature of the easement.  Of course not all easements are the same in scope or benefit, but the very principle behind an easement is that the burdened land owner has essentially given up a property right to the benefited property.  Easements can be granted for specific reasons, such as ingress, egress and utilities which usually are perpetual in nature.  But easements can be limited in time frame, limited to certain ownership and may speak to whether the access can be gated or not, or whether it is limited to a certain number of parcels served by the easement.

A land owner may not be fully informed of the easement that crosses their property and therein lays one of the main reasons for disputes.  In a typical closing where there are professional brokers guiding the transaction, title insurance would be purchased in the normal course of that transaction.  That means a buyer can preview any existing liens or clouds on title, which includes easements.  When these appear on a title report, buyers should insist on viewing the complete document and maybe even further research so they understand the full impact of that easement across the subject property