General reference only. Not legal advice. Talk to a licensed attorney in your state about your situation. Details
Articles
20 articles on how easements, rights-of-way and recorded land rights work in practice. Each one is written from statutes, court opinions and government filings, and lists those sources at the bottom so you can read them yourself.
This library is the written record behind the Easements.com tools. When the address search shows a recorded strip crossing a lot, these articles explain what that strip means: who can use it, what you may build near it, how it ends, and where the original document sits in the county records.
Articles are grouped by subject below. For step-by-step how-to material, start with the guides library; for one state's rules, use easement law by state. Our editorial standards explain how every page is sourced and reviewed.
How to use USDA Web Soil Survey, USGS topographic maps and BLM land records to research rural acreage before you buy, and where these free federal tools stop and county records begin.
A step-by-step walkthrough of the grantor-grantee index, plat books and instrument numbers, so you can pull every recorded easement for a lot yourself.
Prescriptive easements borrow their clock from each state's adverse possession statute. Here is how California, Texas, New York and Ohio set that clock, with the statutes linked.
New and changing statutes and how they alter what an easement holder or landowner can do.
Prescriptive easements borrow their clock from each state's adverse possession statute. Here is how California, Texas, New York and Ohio set that clock, with the statutes linked.
Some states let owners record a solar easement guaranteeing sunlight across a neighbor's land, and others limit HOA bans on panels. California and Florida show both approaches.
Easements usually last forever, but they can end by written release, by one owner acquiring both parcels, by abandonment, or by their own terms. California's statutes illustrate each path.
House Bill 220 in Wyoming's 2025 session would have limited new conservation easements to 30 years; the bill was not taken up for introduction, so perpetual easements remain the norm there.
Court rulings and regulatory filings about power, pipeline and telecom corridors across private land.
In Corder v. Ohio Edison Co., the Supreme Court of Ohio held that an easement letting a utility trim, cut and remove trees and other obstructions also lets it use herbicide inside the corridor.
How county recorders index, accept and publish easement documents, and what is changing.
A step-by-step walkthrough of the grantor-grantee index, plat books and instrument numbers, so you can pull every recorded easement for a lot yourself.
County recorders and clerks across several states brought eRecording online during 2025, shortening the gap between signing an easement and finding it in the public index.
How drones, solar and other new uses strain rules written for older kinds of easements.
Federal airspace rules are moving toward routine drone delivery, but the ground rights that make it work, landing pads, rooftop access, power and conduit, corridor overflight, are still ordinary recorded easements negotiated county by county.
Evergreen explanations of what owners can build, do and demand on land burdened by an easement.
How to use USDA Web Soil Survey, USGS topographic maps and BLM land records to research rural acreage before you buy, and where these free federal tools stop and county records begin.
The two terms get used interchangeably, but a utility easement and a road right-of-way usually carry different scopes, owners and consequences for what you can build.
Utilities usually have broad vegetation rights in their corridors, but the written easement, state rules and advance-notice practices shape what they can do and what you can ask for.
Drainage easements keep stormwater moving between lots. Here is how they are created, who usually maintains them, and how they relate to FEMA flood zones.
A conservation easement permanently limits development in exchange for conservation value and sometimes a tax deduction. Here is what landowners and buyers should understand.
A buyer's line-by-line guide to Schedule B requirements, exceptions, recorded easements and the questions to ask before closing.
What a recorded shared driveway agreement should say about access, maintenance, snow removal, parking, repairs and future owners.
Before placing a fence, shed, addition or pavement in an easement, check the grant, survey, holder's consent and local permit rules.
How common ownership, a land split and lack of legal access may support an easement by necessity, with Florida and California statutes.
A landowner's guide to the lease, easement and option pieces inside wind and solar contracts, what gets recorded, and the clauses that decide how you can use your land for decades.
How to handle a blocked driveway, a fence across a right of way or an argument over repair costs: prove the right, document the problem, write the letter, and know what courts decide.
How repeated Bakken right-of-way requests shaped landowner trust, what North Dakota's data-center growth means for new corridors, and how to read a proposed easement.