California Declaration of Road and Garage Maintenance Agreement

• Category: Real Estate - Easements and Rights of Way
• State: California
• Control #: CA-04419BG
• Format: Word; Rich Text

Description

Declaration of Road and Garage Maintenance Agreement

An easement gives one party the right to go onto another party's property. That property may be owned by a private person, a business entity, or a group of owners. Utilities often get easements that allow them to run pipes or phone lines beneath private property. A nonexclusive easement does not specify any specific parties. An exclusive easement specifies parties who have benefit of that easement. Easements may be obtained for access to another property, called "access and egress", use of spring water, entry to make repairs on a fence or slide area, drive cattle across and other uses. The easement is a real property interest, but separate from the legal title of the owner of the underlying land.
A driveway easement may be created by recording a deed that states, for example, that one neighbor owns the driveway to the halfway point, but has an easement or right of way to use the remainder; however, the adjoining home owns the other half of the driveway, with a right-of-way with respect to the portion the neighbor owns. An easement may be claimed by prescription for the use of the driveway. This requires proof that your neighbor willingly abandoned his use of the driveway during the adverse period when you and your predecessor in title enjoyed the exclusive use of the driveway. Easements should describe the extent of the use, as well as the easement location and boundaries. For example, if an easement is created for the driveway for one house, the owner of the easement cannot turn his house into a hotel with many cars travelling over the easement if the easement was intended for use by a single family.
Easements can be created by a deed to be recorded just like any real property interest, by continuous and open use by the non-owner against the rights of the property owner for a statutory number of years, typically five ("prescriptive easement"), or to do equity (fairness), including giving access to a "land-locked" piece of property (sometimes called an "easement of necessity"). Because landlocked parcels have virtually no value, an easement by necessity can usually be created over an adjoining parcel if, at sometime in the past, it had common ownership with the landlocked parcel.
Right of way is a term subject to different meanings. In the context of property law, it is the right to travel over someone's land and to have the reasonable use and enjoyment of their property as long as it is not inconsistent with the owner's use and enjoyment of the land. The right of way may be a specific grant of land or an "easement," which is a right to pass across another's land.