Looking into a piece of real estate, you may notice that there is an easement attached to the land title. When this happens, you may want to get in touch with a real estate attorney. An easement is a legal agreement that gives the right of using another person’s land to someone who is not the owner for a specific purpose. Easements do not give the other person the right to do whatever they want on your land. If they do start using your land as their own, you can easily find an attorney who can properly deal with this issue. They are usually used to give utility companies the ability to run power lines and cable lines through land. However, there are other reasons why you may need an easement for your property.

To create an easement, you will have to create some sort of written document or deed that specifies the reasons behind the easement as well as the limitations to the agreement. These documents should be carefully written and read over by the property owner. Whatever is written as legal by the document can be used fully by the person that is not the land owner but is part of the easement. Both the property owner and the holder have rights to the land according to the easement. The owner should not do anything to the land that prevents the holder of the easement from doing whatever the easement specified they would be able to do on the land.

Types of Easements

There are two main types of easements. There is an easement appurtenant and an easement in gross. Easements classified as appurtenant deal with ownership of the land. When this is the case, the easement will transfer over to the next land owner should the original holder of the easement decide to sell their home or land. What this means is that the land owner will probably have to notify the new neighbor of the land in which they are able to use per the easement.

An easement in gross is a personal easement that does not transfer over to a new holder like the appurtenant easement does. This means that if the original holder of the easement sells their property, the new owner does not have the same legal right to go on to the other land owners land. Even though there was an easement with that owner before they bought the property. While a new easement may be established with the new property owner, it will have to be a separate document if the land owner keeps it as an easement in gross.

Easements are not a complicated thing to explain. But once it gets down to the applications and legal purposes of the easement, things can get a little tricky. Sometimes there can be legal consequences for things that you did not even know would block the easement. If you are a property owner and are thinking of having an easement with a neighbor, then be sure to discuss the terms. It’s important for both parties to understand what they are entitled to legally do and not allowed to do.