Easements, Rights-of-Way, and Encumbrances
Easements, Rights-of-Way, and Encumbrances
This domain tests the creation, scope, and termination of easements and the difference between an easement and a fee right-of-way. Minnesota questions often involve prescriptive easements, access by necessity, and public-road rights.
Core rules
- An express easement requires a writing, identifiable dominant and servient tenements (unless in gross), and intent. Its scope is fixed by the grant, not by later convenience.
- A prescriptive easement requires actual, open, notorious, continuous, and hostile use for 15 years; exclusivity is not required. Use by permission is not hostile.
- An easement by necessity arises when a parcel is landlocked by a common ownership split; it ends when the necessity ends.
- A public-road right-of-way may be an easement even though the public holds broader rights; the fee may remain in the abutting owner. Minnesota also provides statutory cartway procedures, such as Minn. Stat. § 164.08.
- Encumbrances include easements, covenants, restrictions, and liens; they run with the land if properly recorded and intended to bind successors.
Worked example
Owner A uses a gravel driveway across B's land for 16 years to reach a public road. A's use is open, continuous, and without permission; B never objects. A claims a prescriptive easement. The elements are met if A shows hostile use for the full 15 years, not mere neighborly accommodation. If A began using the drive under a written license, the use is permissive and the claim fails unless the license ended and A then used adversely for 15 years.
Traps
Treating a utility easement as ownership of the strip; assuming a right-of-way is always a fee; forgetting that permission defeats prescriptiveness; using adverse-possession elements without the exclusivity nuance; ignoring the scope of the easement when a successor widens it.