Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Louisiana

Re: Servitude and Property Owner's Rights

First of all, you need to determine if the lake is natural or man made. There is reserved to boaters, the right to use the shoreline to tie their boats in restricted ways, but they cannot use your property for any other reason. However, you need to read the subdivision plan. There is probably a provision establishing a servitude of some width along the shoreline and you cannot do anything to disrupt the use of the servitude. Additionally, if the lake is man made, you need to check your property discription. You may learn that your actual property line stops short of the water's edge. I suspect a reading of the original subdivision plan may show the servitude and you cannot do a thing about it. I have worked extensively with servitudes and believe if you read all the documents you will discover the servitude and whether it is one of use, passage or simply for the utility company. If the latter, you may then have some recourse. Remember, just because it is not in the restrictions does not mean you can ignore it.

Re: Servitude and Property Owner's Rights

I read Mr. Pizzolato's advice and it seems good. It doesn't seem that you have many favorable options here. I'm not too excited about the manmade versus natural lake issue. The real issue is the existence of the servitude itself. The first thing to do is to read the papers to see in whose favor the servitude was granted. I suspect it is probably a utility servitude, but it could be a servitude of passage and access to the lake in favor of the other residents of the subdivision. Rule number one is to get the facts. In either case, however, it is highly unlikely that you will have the right to have a fence extend into any part of the servitude and thereby impede either the pedestrian or utility company use of the servitude. What you might do, as a practical matter, to keep people outside of your property is to construct a fence along the servitude line and back up to your house. In this way the fence would not extend into the servitude area. Although people could still use the servitude, they would be prevented from actually trampling on the portion of your property that is outside of the servitude area. That may not be a great solution as the fence may impede your view of the lake.