Real Property Ownership, Interests, and Encumbrances
Estates and forms of co-ownership
Freehold estates run from fee simple absolute (the broadest bundle) down to a life estate, which ends at death or a stated event and is measured by a life. Leaseholds are personal property interests. Co-ownership questions dominate this topic: tenants in common hold undivided shares with no survivorship and no need for equal shares; joint tenants require the four unities plus clear survivorship language, and Connecticut does not presume survivorship from a mere listing of names; tenancy by the entirety exists only for married couples, cannot be severed by one spouse alone, and ends on divorce, converting to a tenancy in common.
Encumbrances
Encumbrances burden but do not defeat title: mortgages, tax and judgment liens, mechanic's liens (Connecticut requires recording within a short statutory window after work stops, so a late lien may fail), easements, covenants and restrictions, leases, and encroachments. Easements appurtenant benefit and burden adjoining parcels and run with the land; easements in gross are personal. Easements arise by express grant, implication, necessity, or prescription through long adverse use. A license is revocable permission, never an easement.
Adverse possession and boundaries
Connecticut's adverse possession period is 15 years of actual, open, notorious, exclusive, continuous, hostile use under a claim of right. Prescriptive easements follow a similar theory of long adverse use.
Traps
Confusing an encumbrance with a title defect - a mortgage scheduled to be paid at closing is not a defect. Confusing zoning (public regulation, not an encumbrance) with a private deed restriction. Assuming survivorship language is unnecessary.
Rule of thumb: if the benefit "runs with the land," it is an easement appurtenant; if it belongs to a person, it is in gross.