Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

You need to put the Sellers on notice in writing immediately that you do not accept the title contingency based on this inconsistency - that preserves your right to cancel the transaction based on the failure of the Seller to be able to provide clear title. Check with you Realtor as you may have been deemed to have accepted title if you let too much time go by since first receiving the preliminary title report. Second, you need to insist that the title company do further research, and possibly clear that exception from the exclusions exhibit if the easement is not actually binding on the adjacent property owner. Finally, you need to review this with a local real estate attorney. This is not something that can get itself resolved on a free legal forum - an attorney needs to review the title report, the documentation for the easements and other pertinent information before anyone can opine as to what you should or should not do.

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You are all mixed up and Mr. Gibbs is just plain wrong. If the easement benefits your land, you are the dominant tenement. A preliminary policy of title from a title insurer for you should identify it. But you are not buying your neighbor's property. He is the servient tenement. You wouldn't be given his title policy, and what was disclosed to him is between him and his title insurer.

An easement that benefits and burdens someone's property does not have to be in the legal description of the property to be valid. If it was properly granted or reserved by your predecessors, it runs with the land, without having to identify it on each subsequent deed.

The fact that your prospective neighbor is an A@#&^% is not grounds for you to claim that the title contingency was not met. You don't buy property subject to a contingency that someone won't be a jerk and contest record title.

I agree with Mr. Roach. The legal description of the property you are buying would, usually, include the easement benefitting it. However, documentation of the property burdened by the easement is less likely to reference the easement, particularly title documents that would be accessible to the public.

Your interests should be adequately protected if there is an access easement on record at the County Recorder's office. That should be sufficient to require the neighbor to honor your right of access. I say "should" because appropriate caution dictates that a lawyer read the easement that's in the record and make sure it's valid, refers to the correct properties, etc.

You might, of course, have to take the neighbor to court to enforce your rights. That alone might, in turn, be enough to allow you to cancel your contract on a lack of marketable-title basis. You are supposed not only to receive good title, including access, but also to be free of the need to clear or defend your title in court. See a real-estate lawyer if in doubt.