What Is an Easement in California Real Estate?

An easement is a right to use another person's land for a defined purpose without owning it. The classic examples are a shared driveway, a private road crossing a neighbor's parcel, and utility lines running under someone else's property. The land burdened by the easement is the servient tenement; the land benefited is the dominant tenement.

California recognizes easements created by written grant or reservation, by implication, by necessity when a parcel would otherwise be landlocked, and by prescription, which requires open, notorious, hostile, and continuous use for five years. Unlike adverse possession, a prescriptive easement does not require paying the property taxes, and it yields a right of use rather than ownership.

Easement litigation usually erupts when one side blocks a road, overburdens a shared driveway, builds over a utility corridor, or claims years of informal use ripened into a permanent right. The recorded chain of title, historical photographs, and testimony about how the land was actually used tend to decide these cases.

The Ways an Easement Comes Into Existence

Most easements are express: written, signed, and recorded, either in a deed or in a standalone grant. But California recognizes several unwritten easements, and those generate most of the litigation. An implied easement arises where a single owner used part of a parcel to benefit another part, the use was apparent and continuous, and the parcels were then split. An easement by necessity arises where a parcel would otherwise be landlocked. A prescriptive easement arises from open, notorious, continuous, and hostile use for five years, though unlike adverse possession it does not require paying taxes and does not transfer ownership, only a right of use.

Courts may also impose an equitable easement, sometimes called balancing the hardships, where an encroachment was innocent and removing it would cause disproportionate harm.

Scope Fights: Overburdening the Easement

The more common modern dispute is not whether an easement exists but how far it goes. An easement granted for residential access does not automatically support commercial truck traffic. A right to cross does not automatically include a right to park, pave, install utilities, or widen. The holder of the easement, called the dominant tenement, generally may do what is reasonably necessary to use it, and the burdened owner, the servient tenement, generally may use the land for anything that does not unreasonably interfere.

Both of those standards are elastic, which is why scope disputes so often turn on the specific language of the grant and decades of actual conduct on the ground.

How Easements End

Easements are durable. They generally run with the land and survive a sale, which surprises buyers who assumed a neighbor's use was a personal courtesy. Termination usually requires something affirmative: an express written release, merger when one owner acquires both parcels, abandonment shown by conduct clearly demonstrating intent to give up the right, or expiration of a stated term.

Simple nonuse, even for many years, is generally not enough on its own to extinguish an express easement.