Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Real Estate Easement

First, there are two major types of easements, appurtenant easements and easements in gross. Forget the old-fashioned names; the important difference is that the former involves a benefitted parcel and a burdened parcel, sometimes known as the dominant tenement and the servient tenement; whereas the latter (easement in gross) does not require a benefitted parcel, it is sufficient that there be a benefitted person or entity, for example, a public utility that has an easement across the burdened parcel for pipes or wires or whatever.

OK, let's go back to the appurtenant easement. The benefit runs with the dominant tenement and the burden runs with the servient tenement. Both the benefit and the burden are forever hooked to the parcels of land involved at the creation of the easement. Owners may come and go, but the benefit and the burden remain inherent attributes of the parcels of land.

Now, in law nothing is ever quite so simple as a two-paragraph explanation of basic principles makes it seem. It would, for example, be possible to craft an interest in land that would continue to redound to the benefit of a former owner after he sold out. This would be an extremely unusual exception to the way things usually work in the world of easements.

In addition to easements, there are rights to use the land of another called licenses. Most licenses are personal rights, not linked to the license holder's ownership of land. However, licenses are revocable at will, subject only to a possible claim for contract damages if the license were granted based on a contractual promise which the revocation breached.

It's important to think of all of this with the concept of an easement in gross in the back of your mind. The owner-beneficiary of an easement in gross normally isn't required to continue to own any particular parcel of land in order to hold onto its rights in the easement. Nevertheless, I don't see how even an owner of an easement in gross could unilaterally create rights in a third person to benefit from its easement, or to tack rights from Easement A to Easement B when A and B are held by different parties.

Re: Real Estate Easement

The easement stays with the land. Contact me directly.

Re: Real Estate Easement

This is not a simple legal matter. If the easement runs with the land then it continues absent abandonment of the easement by non-use. If not, it is personal to the recipient of the easement (possible but not likely). One needs to examine and interpret the documents.