Types of easements
What are the three types of easements?
The classic three are easements appurtenant, easements in gross, and prescriptive easements, one attaches to a neighboring parcel, one belongs to a company or person, and one is earned by years of use.
An easement appurtenant benefits a specific parcel of land. The benefited lot is the dominant estate and the burdened lot is the servient estate, and because the right belongs to the land rather than the owner, it transfers automatically at every sale.
An easement in gross belongs to a person or a company with no benefited parcel behind it. Utility corridors, pipelines, rail lines, billboards and cell sites are almost always in gross, and commercial versions of them can be bought and sold like any other business asset.
A prescriptive easement is created by conduct rather than a signature. Open, continuous use of someone else's land without permission, for the period your state's statute sets, can ripen into a permanent right to keep using it. Some lists substitute easements by necessity, which courts imply when a parcel is landlocked by the split that created it.
What this looks like in practice
The three-way split matters because it predicts who you will be dealing with. An appurtenant easement means your counterpart is the neighbor, and the conversation is usually about scope, maintenance and courtesy. An easement in gross means your counterpart is a corporate land services department that answers on its own timetable, and a prescriptive claim means your counterpart is a lawyer.
Most residential lots carry more than one category at once: a platted utility easement in gross along the rear line, an appurtenant drainage or access right shared with a neighbor, and occasionally an unrecorded path someone has been using long enough to matter. Reading the plat and Schedule B together is how you see all three at the same time.
What to do next
- 1List every exception in Schedule B and mark whether each names a benefited parcel or a company.
- 2Pull the recorded documents from the county recorder, clerk, or register of deeds, most offices provide a certified copy for a few dollars per page, and many publish a free online index.
- 3Walk the property for uses that no document explains, which is where prescriptive claims begin.
- 4Match each easement to the type page for that category so you know how it can be narrowed or ended.
What to look for
- Whether the grant names a benefited parcel. That is what makes it appurtenant rather than in gross.
- Whether the right was recorded at all; prescriptive and necessity easements usually are not.
- Language such as "successors and assigns" or "runs with the land", which signals permanence.
- The stated purpose, which limits what the holder may actually do.
Questions people ask next
Are there really only three types?
No, three is the standard teaching split by how easements are created or held. In everyday practice people also name easements by purpose: utility, drainage, access, conservation, right-of-way. A single easement can be described both ways at once, such as an appurtenant access easement.
Which type is most common on a house lot?
A platted utility easement, held in gross by the providers serving the subdivision, along the rear or side lot lines. It is so routine that buyers often do not notice it until they plan a shed or a pool.
Can one easement be more than one type?
Yes. A grant can create an appurtenant access right for a neighboring lot and an in-gross utility right for a provider in the same instrument, with different rules applying to each part.
General educational reference only. Prescription periods and their exceptions change, and several states set the period by case law rather than by statute. Read the linked official code and consult a licensed attorney in that state before relying on any of it.
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