Blog · September 30, 2026
What Is a Floating Easement?
A floating easement grants a right, often a way of ingress, without fixing the route on the ground. It floats until it is located by agreement, by use, or by a later document. It is not a right to wander the whole tract forever if a route has already been fixed.
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Granted, not yet pinned
A deed may reserve a right of way across the land to the county road and never give a bearing or a width. That reservation is real and unlocated. Courts and surveyors call it floating, or a blanket easement when it covers an entire described tract. Until the route is fixed, the servient owner cannot know which strip to keep clear, and the holder cannot pretend every possible route is already chosen. Location happens when the parties record a description, when the holder builds a road and the use is definite, or when a court places it. The rules for who gets to choose the route, and how reasonable the route must be, are legal rules. They are not a weekend decision to drive a new line because the old track is muddy.
Once it settles, it stops floating
After a route is established, the easement is generally fixed to that route. The holder does not get a fresh choice every spring. A later survey can write metes and bounds for the strip the use already occupied, and a recorded agreement can do it cleanly. If you are reading an old reservation and you also see a gravel lane that has been the only access for decades, do not sketch a second lane on the other side of the field and call it the same easement. Note the reservation, note the visible route, and let a surveyor and a lawyer say whether the use located it. County GIS may draw the gravel as a line and may draw nothing. Platbookmapper links to the GIS and will not locate a floating easement for you.
Width still has to come from somewhere
A floating easement that never states a width is not an invitation to pave forty feet because modern trucks are wide. The width is whatever the document states, or, if it is silent, whatever width the law supplies for the purpose, which is a legal conclusion a surveyor can then stake. You do not supply the width with a measuring wheel. A wheel is not a survey, and a phone GPS track of one drive across a pasture is not a location. Do not cross the rest of the servient land to try alternate routes. If you need the easement located for a building permit, the product you want is a recorded description or a survey tied to the established route, not a new scar on the ground.
What to do next
- Read whether the easement gives a strip description or only a right to cross.
- If a route is already built, do not sketch a second one.
- Look for a later instrument that finally describes the strip.
- Treat width as a term to be read or adjudicated, not as a number you pick.
The mix-up to avoid
Treating floating as permission to relocate the road whenever it is convenient. Relocation, if the document or a statute allows it, is a process. A new track through the hay is not that process.
Questions people ask
Is a blanket utility easement floating?
Often yes, in the sense that a utility may locate its line within the burdened tract under the grant. Once the line is in the ground, that location usually fixes the practical route, subject to the document. Do not confuse it with a right to farm the whole surface.
Can the servient owner pick the route?
Sometimes the grant gives the servient owner the first choice, and sometimes the holder chooses a reasonable route. The instrument and local law say which. In the meantime, neither owner should bulldoze a fresh corridor.
Find the county map
The county GIS map is the practical place to start. Find it from the Platbookmapper directory, then treat the recorded plat and deed as the documents behind the picture.
Not a survey. County GIS and tax parcel maps are assessment and planning layers. They are not a substitute for a recorded plat, deed, or licensed survey.