Servient estate

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A servient estate (or servient premises or servient tenement) is a parcel of land that is subject to an easement. The easement may be an easement in gross, an easement that benefits an individual or other entity, or it may be an easement appurtenant, an easement that benefits another parcel of land.

For an easement appurtenant, the parcel of land that benefits from an easement over the servient estate is called the dominant estate (or dominant premises or dominant tenement). [1]

Related Research Articles

This aims to be a complete list of the articles on real estate.

An estate in land is, in the law of England and Wales, an interest in real property that is or may become possessory. It is a type of personal property and encompasses land ownership, rental and other arrangements that give people the right to use land. This is distinct from sovereignty over the land, which includes the right to government and taxation.

In common law, a hereditament is any kind of property that can be inherited.

A profit, in the law of real property, is a nonpossessory interest in land similar to the better-known easement, which gives the holder the right to take natural resources such as petroleum, minerals, timber, and wild game from the land of another. Indeed, because of the necessity of allowing access to the land so that resources may be gathered, every profit contains an implied easement for the owner of the profit to enter the other party's land for the purpose of collecting the resources permitted by the profit.

An equitable servitude is a term used in the law of real property to describe a nonpossessory interest in land that operates much like a covenant running with the land. In England and Wales the term is defunct and in Scotland it has very long been a sub-type of the Scottish legal version of servitudes, which are what English law calls easements. However covenants and equitable servitudes in most of the jurisdictions across North America, are slightly different. The usual distinction is based on the remedy plaintiff seeks and precedent will allow for the scenario in question. Where the terms are unmerged, holders of a covenant seek money damages; holders of equitable servitudes seek injunctions. The term used to exist in England widely before Tulk v Moxhay and as byproduct of the Judicature Acts became one of the fullest mergers of equity and common law in England and Wales so as to agree initially on the term "equitable covenant", then coming to be united in the term covenant save that "equitable" bears a particular meaning in English property rights since at least 1925: it means not fully compliant with registration/written formalities. If lacks legally routine formalities it is not a full legal covenant and therefore more tenuous, often only enforceable personally and against the original covenantor.

A servitude is a qualified beneficial interest severed or fragmented from the ownership of an inferior property and attached to a superior property or to some person other than the owner. At civil law, ownership (dominium) is the only full real right whereas a servitude is a subordinate real right on par with wayleaves, real burdens, security interests, and reservations. There are two types: predial, attaching to property, and personal, attaching to a person.

A dominant estate is the parcel of real property that has an easement over another piece of property. The type of easement involved may be an appurtenant easement that benefits another parcel of land, or an easement appurtenant, that benefits a person or entity. The easement may also be an affirmative easement, that permits a person to do something on the servient estate, or a negative easement that allows the holder of the easement to restrict activity on the servient estate. Estate is a common law concept.

<i>Sturges v Bridgman</i>

Sturges v Bridgman (1879) LR 11 Ch D 852 is a landmark case in nuisance decided by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. It decides that what constitutes reasonable use of one's property depends on the character of the locality and that it is no defence that the plaintiff "came to the nuisance".

<i>Re Ellenborough Park</i>

Re Ellenborough Park[1955] EWCA Civ 4 was an English land law case which reformulated the tests for an easement. It found an easement to use a communal garden to be a valid easement in law. There is no requirement for all of the houses to be immediately next to the garden to benefit from it.

Robert Francis Brachtenbach was an American politician and jurist from the state of Washington.

An easement is a nonpossessory right to use and/or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. It is "best typified in the right of way which one landowner, A, may enjoy over the land of another, B". An easement is a property right and type of incorporeal property in itself at common law in most jurisdictions.

<i>Smith and Snipes Hall Farm Ltd v River Douglas Catchment Board</i>

Smith and Snipes Hall Farm Ltd v River Douglas Catchment Board [1949] 2 KB 500 is an English land law and English contract law appeal decision. The case, decided by Denning LJ, confirmed positive covenants can supplant privity of contract in contracts to improve land and secondly a covenant should be implied where the contract shows an intention that the obligation would attach to the land. The case thirdly held in that context, a somewhat uncertain description of lands which was capable of being rendered certain by extrinsic evidence was sufficient to enforce the covenant.

Moncrieff v Jamieson [2007] UKHL 42 is a Scottish property law case decided by the House of Lords on servitudes.

<i>M.P.M. Builders, LLC v. Dwyer</i> Case of Massachusetts Supreme Court

M.P.M. Builders, LLC v. Dwyer, 442 Mass. 87, 809 N.E.2d 1053 (2004), was a case decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Court that first adopted the Restatement Third of Servitudes for the relocation of easements in that state.

Easements in English law are certain rights in English land law that a person has over another's land. Rights recognised as easements range from very widespread forms of rights of way, most rights to use service conduits such as telecommunications cables, power supply lines, supply pipes and drains, rights to use communal gardens and rights of light to more strained and novel forms. All types are subject to general rules and constraints. As one of the formalities in English law express, express legal easements must be created by deed.

<i>Copeland v Greenhalf</i>

Copeland v Greenhalf [1952] Ch 488 is an English property law case establishing that excessive use of another's land cannot be granted by way of an easement. The defendant claimed that he held a prescriptive right to leave an unlimited number of cars on his neighbour's land, by way of such a right having existed for some fifty years previously. The court found that the claim would amount to the defendant effectively becoming a joint user of the plaintiff's land, and this was not something which could be implied as a right.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South African property law</span> Important aspects of redistribution agreement

South African property law regulates the "rights of people in or over certain objects or things." It is concerned, in other words, with a person's ability to undertake certain actions with certain kinds of objects in accordance with South African law. Among the formal functions of South African property law is the harmonisation of individual interests in property, the guarantee and protection of individual rights with respect to property, and the control of proprietary relationships between persons, as well as their rights and obligations. The protective clause for property rights in the Constitution of South Africa stipulates those proprietary relationships which qualify for constitutional protection. The most important social function of property law in South Africa is to manage the competing interests of those who acquire property rights and interests. In recent times, restrictions on the use of and trade in private property have been on the rise.

<i>London and Blenheim Estates Ltd v Ladbroke Retail Parks Ltd</i>

London and Blenheim Estates Ltd v Ladbroke Retail Parks Ltd [1993] 4 All ER 157 is an English land law case, concerning easements. It persuasively confirmed for one of the first times, obiter, that parking a car on land on its own could be the appropriate subject matter for an express easement. It established that an arrangement for a future extension of easement rights over specific other land would require a specific parcel of dominant land too. Simply agreeing that wherever any dominant land is extended the easement on the servient land will be extended is insufficient.

<i>Das v Linden Mews Ltd</i>

Das v Linden Mews Ltd[2002] EWCA Civ 590 is an English land law case, concerning rights of way.

<i>Crow v Wood</i>

Crow v Wood[1970] EWCA Civ 5 is an English land law case, confirming an easement commonly exists for the right to have a fence or wall kept in repair expressed in earlier deeds, which is a right which is capable of being "granted" by law and secondly, as a separate but on the facts, related issue, of the right of common land pasture asserted by continued use.

References

  1. "Dominant tenement". Wex. Cornell Law School. Retrieved 15 May 2018.