Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois

Re: Do easements automatically transfer when property is sold?

Depends on the wording of the easement. The easement would not need to appear on the new owner's legal description.

Re: Do easements automatically transfer when property is sold?

Illinois easements "run with the land", so a later deed does not have to recite the easement to keep it in force. Your questions suggest some knowledge of easements, so here goes.

There are three kinds of easements recognized under Illinois law. Two of the three easements generally involve two parcels of land, the property over which the easement applies, called the "servient estate", and the property benefited by the easement, called the "dominant estate". Both of these types of easements are predicated on both parcels having a common owner at the time the easement arises. The third type, an "easement by prescription", arises by the use by others of property as a matter of right during an UNINTERRUPTED lengthy period of time. In Illinois, an easement by prescription is 20 years. My favorite examples of guarding against this type of easement is (i) Rockefeller Center, in New York, where one of the streets in the square is really a license of private lands, and the owners once each year have a chain across the street to prevent the occurence of an easement by prescription, and (2) If you ever are near the Amoco Building in Chicago, note the brass triangles at the corners of the marble plaza surrounding the building. They are notice to the public that a license, and not an easement, is granted for walking over the property, so that the owners have reserved the right to change/build/etc. in that space.

First, is an easement by necessity. This easement arises when the seller of a parcel has access to public rights-of-way,(or other services benefiting both properties, such as utilities), but the "new" parcel has no access. Taking the right-of-way example, the parcel that has no access now has an easement for right-of-way to the nearest street, etc. Otherwise, the owner could not access his lands. This notion may have been the source of your comment that the adjacent parcels have other means of access.

The second type is an easement of record. This easement is created by a document in your chain of title from the grantor, reserving some right to the grantor for the benefit of his remaining property. This is apparently the type of easement you have.

While you are bound to recognize the easement for future owners, their "easement of record" does not entitle them to enlargement. For example, if an easement by prescription for a right of way arose by a person using an 8 foot wide cart for 20 years going from point A to point B, that person, or any other, doesn't have a right to take a 10 foot wide cart down the right of way. In your case, your easement aparently specifies use for "field and grain bins", so the owners of the other property can't use it for any other purpose, and no one other than the owners can use it for "field and grain bins".