Easement law by state

How the prescriptive clock works

A prescriptive easement is a use right earned rather than granted. When someone uses part of your land openly, continuously, and without your permission for long enough, most states will recognize a permanent right to keep doing it. Crossing a driveway, maintaining a path, running a pipe. Ownership does not change hands; the right to keep using the land does.

The period is the headline number, and it varies widely: 5 years in California, Montana, Nevada at the fast end, up to 30 years in Louisiana. Across the 51 jurisdictions summarized here the most common period is 20 years, used by 21 states.

The number alone rarely decides a case. States differ on whether use must be exclusive, whether the claimant must have paid taxes on the strip, whether a claim can run against public land, and whether the owner's permission, given in writing at any point, resets the clock. Each state page sets out those elements, quotes the governing statute where a free official text is available, and links to the state code so you can read it yourself.

How to use these pages

Start with the state where the property sits, then check three things: the period, the elements a claimant has to prove, and where easements are recorded locally. If a use on your land has been running for close to the state's period, that is the point to get advice rather than to put up a fence. And if you are buying, it is the point to walk the property looking for worn tracks, utility hardware, and drainage paths that no document mentions.