Video Summary
Can I remove an easement from my property? Well, that’s really a good question, and easement law is a complicated area of law. An easement, first let’s define what that is. It means that someone owns the property, and then someone else has the right to use it for a particular purpose. So you have the burdened property, which is the person who owns it, and then you have the benefited property or a benefited person who has a right to use your property for particular purposes. If they’re private easements such as utility easements, things such as that, or usually you have ingress and egress easements, meaning a way to get in and out of property, those cannot be eliminated from your title unless you own both the burdened property, where the easement is situated, as well as the benefited property. So an easement going from Parcel A to Parcel B, you can’t eliminate that private easement. However, if you own both A and B, well, then you can extinguish the easement, or the easement goes away since it’s no longer needed since you own both parcels.
Now, if you’re talking about an easement or a road right of way that the public – that’s shown on a plat or something like that with the county, you can petition the county to vacate a road right of way if – that’s really not an easement. It’s usually a road right of way, and the county can issue a – if they decide to do so, can issue an order or a – well, whatever the Board of County Commissioners issues to vacate the road right of way. And then the road is then – one half of it goes to each property owner on each side of the road. But that takes a petition, and be sure that you don’t have anybody else out there that could object to it. So it’s difficult to get rid of private easements.
Road right of ways can be vacated if they’re basically abandoned or have never been used, such as an old plat. So if you’ve got an easement across your property, well, you need to see who it’s benefiting and possibly be able to get rid of it that way, but that’s most difficult to do.
Anybody have any other question about easements, well, give me a call at 727-847-2288.