Legal Definitions - easement

An easement is a legal agreement that allows someone to use another person's property for a specific purpose. There are different types of easements, but they all involve one person giving permission to another person to use their land.

There are two main types of easements:

• Affirmative Easement: This type of easement gives the holder the right to do something on the grantor's land, such as travel on a road through the grantor's property.
• Negative Easement: This type of easement allows the holder to prevent the grantor from doing something on their land that is lawful for them to do, such as building a structure that obscures light or a scenic view.

Easements can be created in several ways, including by express grant, implication, necessity, and adverse possession. Easements can also be terminated if the necessity for the easement ceases to exist, if the servient land is destroyed, or if it was abandoned.

One example of an easement is a driveway that crosses over one person's property to reach another person's property. The owner of the property that the driveway crosses over would grant an affirmative easement to the owner of the other property, allowing them to use the driveway to access their property.

Another example of an easement is a negative easement that prevents a property owner from building a structure that would block their neighbor's view of the ocean. The neighbor would grant the negative easement to ensure that their view is protected.

These examples illustrate how easements can be used to allow or restrict the use of someone's property for a specific purpose.