by Krystle Hernandez

Created on: July 05, 2010

Black's Law Dictionary defines an "easement" as "an interest in land owned by another person, consisting in the right to use or control the land...for a specific, limited purpose." Easements are particularly unique interests in property in that unlike licenses or leases, certain types of easements may last forever.   However, easements do not give the holder of the interest any legal right to change the nature of the easement or its scope.  Moreover, in many circumstances, easement holders do not necessarily have the right to sell, or even improve the easement. 

As previously mentioned, in property law, there are various kinds of easements including access easements, affirmative easements, common easements, easements by estoppel, easements by necessity, easements in gross, implied easements, express easements, and easement appurtenant, among others.  Each of these forms of easements can provide different rights and obligations to the holder of the easement and, potentially, to the owner of the servient estate which is burdened by an easement.  However, ALL easements must either be appurtenant or in gross.

So, what exactly is an easement appurtenant?  An easement appurtenant is one that has been created with the intent to benefit another tract of land.  The use of the appurtenant easement is incident to the ownership of the land.  In other words, easements appurtenant were intended to "run with the land."  Perhaps the best way to understand this legal term is through an example:

A owns Blackacre and B owns Whiteacre, an adjacent parcel of land. If A grants B an easement across Blackacre so that B can access the adjacent beach, it may be the law will imply an easement appurtenant in the situation if A's intent was that any individual who ultimately moves into Whiteacre, whether or not it be B, would have access to the beach through the easement.   Thus, if B sells Whiteacre to C, C will become the holder of the easement and he will be allowed to access the beach through the same passage that A initially granted to B.

Overall, the law of easements can become quite complicated if one gets caught up in the terminology that classifies each form of easement.  The most important thing to remember, however, is that when rights to an easement are in dispute, it is most often the case that the court will look first to the grantor's intent to determine whether or not the easement was intended to be an easement in gross (given to a specific person) or an easement appurtenant (that runs with the land and is thereby transferred to subsequent owners of the dominant estate benefited by the easement).

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