Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: commom driveway

There is no clear answer to your question. It depends on a lot of facts you don't have.

Re: commom driveway

I know what you're getting at with this question, but it doesn't work quite that way.

There are two separate but somewhat related concepts under which the owner of real property can lose some or all of his or her rights.

The first is by "adverse possession," sometimes known as squatter's rights. Under adverse possession theory, someone who is in "open, notorious, continuous and hostile possession" of land for five or more years, and pays all the taxes, can no longer be removed from possession by the now-former legal owner and can be put on title by bringing a suit to quiet title in himself or herself.

The second concept involves obtaining a "prescriptive easement" to use someone else's property, e.g., by driving over it as an access route for five years or more, openly, continuously, notoriously, and without permission. Since there are no taxes (usually) associated with an easement, there is no tax-payment requirement.

What you are getting at is rather clearly a prescriptive easement. If several different landowners, say X, Y, and Z each drives over Blackacre twice a day, to and from work for example, over a period of five or more years, and the owners of Blackacre never gave permission, the use will ripen into a prescriptive easement and Blackacre's owners can no longer forbid the use or build a fence to stop it. X, Y and Z and all future owners of their properties will have the right of access across Blackacre.

However, it is not true that "no one" owns the strip of land. It is still part of Blackacre and the owners of Blackacre still own the strip of land and can use it for anything that's compatible with the rights of X, Y and Z. For example, Blackacre's owners can graze sheep on it, or extract the oil under it. Under certain circumstances, the easement can be abandoned, and when that happens the owners of Blackacre will no longer be burdened by the easement, which will disappear.

So, the land burdened by an easement is still owned by the party that owned it originally, or his successor, but the ownership is burdened or encumbered by the easement so long as it exists.

An easement is a (usually) permanent nonpossessory right to use the land of another for limited purposes.