Easement

Key Takeaways

• An easement grants the right to use another owner's land for a stated purpose. It never transfers ownership of the land itself.
• An easement appurtenant involves two parcels and runs with the land: the dominant tenement benefits and the servient tenement carries the burden.
• An easement in gross benefits a person or a company rather than a neighboring parcel, which is how utility and pipeline rights are held.
• An easement is an encumbrance but never a lien. It limits use and cannot be paid off the way a debt can.

What It Means

An easement is the right of one party to use land owned by someone else for a defined purpose. The landowner keeps title, keeps paying the taxes, and keeps every use that does not conflict, but the strip of ground or the activity described in the easement is no longer the owner's to refuse. A shared driveway, a sewer line crossing a back corner, a power company's right to string wire and trim trees: each of those is an easement, and each is an Encumbrance on the land it crosses.

Two shapes cover most exam questions. An easement appurtenant attaches to parcels rather than to people. It has a Dominant Tenement, the parcel that gains the benefit, and a Servient Tenement, the parcel that carries the burden, and it passes automatically to whoever buys either one. An easement in gross belongs to an individual or a company and has no benefited parcel at all. Utility easements are the everyday example, and they survive every sale of the land they cross, which is why they appear on title reports decade after decade.

How It Works in Washington

In Washington, an easement is an interest in real estate, so the paperwork rules for real estate apply to it. Every conveyance of real estate or any interest in it must be by deed (RCW 64.04.010), which means an express easement has to be in writing and signed like any other conveyance. Recording is what protects it. An unrecorded interest is void against a later buyer or lender who pays value in good faith and records first (RCW 65.08.070). A handshake letting a neighbor use the driveway is not an easement, and a signed easement left in a drawer instead of the county recorder's file may not survive the next sale.

Not every easement starts with a document. Washington recognizes a Prescriptive Easement built on use that is open, notorious, continuous, and adverse for ten years, the same ten-year window RCW 4.16.020 gives an owner to bring an action to recover real property or its possession. That is why an unexplained gravel track across a listing, or a neighbor's fence line that does not match the legal description, is a question for the seller and the title officer rather than something a broker should wave off.

Example

Ana owns a five-acre parcel near Sequim with frontage on the county road. Behind her, Ben's parcel is landlocked. They sign an easement giving Ben and every future owner of his parcel a 20-foot-wide right of way along Ana's south fence line, split maintenance costs 50/50 in the same document, and record it with the Clallam County Auditor. Ana's parcel is now the servient tenement and Ben's is the dominant tenement. Four years later Ana sells for $340,000. The buyer's title report shows the easement as a recorded exception, and the appraiser takes $6,000 off for the lost use of the south strip. The new owner cannot gate the road. The easement was recorded before the sale, it runs with the land, and it binds every owner who follows.

Common Mistakes and Exam Traps

• An easement is not a license. A license is revocable permission that ends at the owner's word; an easement is an interest in land that normally survives both revocation and sale.
• The dominant tenement benefits and the servient tenement is burdened. Candidates reverse this pair more often than any other in the encumbrance chapter.
• An easement in gross has no dominant tenement. If the benefit is held by a utility company rather than by a neighboring parcel, appurtenant is the wrong answer.
• An easement is an encumbrance but never a lien. It cannot be paid off at closing the way a judgment or a tax bill can.