Blog · September 30, 2026
What Is an Appurtenant Easement?
An appurtenant easement is attached to a parcel of land and benefits that parcel. It is meant to transfer automatically when the parcel is sold. It needs a dominant estate and a servient estate. A personal permission to cross is not appurtenant.
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Attached to the lot, not the owner
The usual driveway, the shared well easement that serves a house lot, and the access easement shown on a plat for the benefit of Lot 7 are appurtenant if they were created to serve that lot. The benefit is part of the lot’s bundle of rights. When you deed Lot 7, you do not need to remember a separate sentence to pass the easement, although careful deeds recite it. The burden stays on the servient lot the same way. What makes the easement appurtenant is the intention, shown by words such as appurtenant to, for the benefit of the land described as, or a plat that ties the easement to a lot. A grant to Maria and her heirs to cross the field, with no dominant land named, may be personal or in gross instead. The difference decides whether a buyer of Maria’s house gets the right.
Creation and the plat
Appurtenant easements are created by a grant in a deed, by a plat that dedicates or reserves them in a way the law recognizes, or by other doctrines such as necessity that a court would have to apply. A line labeled easement on a sketch the seller emailed is not creation. A line on the recorded plat, tied to a lot, often is, if the plat was the conveying map. Read the certificate. Then read any separate easement instrument the title report lists. One lot can have several appurtenant easements. List them. County GIS may show one and miss another. The miss is not a termination. Platbookmapper does not inventory easements. It links to the county assessment map so you can identify the lots, then you read the record.
Use stays inside the original purpose
An appurtenant easement for a single residence does not automatically become an easement for a six-lot subdivision carved out of the dominant land. That expansion can be an overburden. The original purpose and the language control. You do not measure overburden with a phone GPS count of cars. You read the grant, then, if a dispute is real, you involve a surveyor for location and a lawyer for the use. Do not widen the physical driveway onto more of the servient lot because the easement is appurtenant. Appurtenant describes who holds the benefit. The width sentence describes where. They are different sentences.
What to do next
- Find the dominant lot the easement names.
- Confirm the easement is recorded on a plat or in an instrument.
- Expect it to pass with the dominant lot.
- Keep the stated purpose and width as limits on later, heavier use.
The mix-up to avoid
Assuming every recorded right of way is appurtenant. Utilities often hold easements in gross, which benefit the utility’s system, not a neighboring house lot. The label changes who can assign the right.
Questions people ask
If the deed is silent, did the easement fail to transfer?
Not necessarily. Appurtenant rights typically pass with the land even when the new deed forgets to mention them. Silence in the latest deed is a reason to find the original grant, not a reason to declare the easement dead.
Can the dominant and servient lots merge?
If the same owner acquires both in the same right, the easement can terminate by merger, because you do not need an easement over your own land. Later resale can reopen questions. Merger is a legal result, not something you mark with a stake.
Find the county map
Search the county on the Platbookmapper home page. The directory links to the official parcel viewer. It does not draw the lots, and the line on the screen is an assessment map, not a survey.
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.