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I have an easement on my beach front property and the public is repeatedly cutting across the easement boundaries and walking over my flowers. What is the line between easements and encroachments?
Easements and encroachments also affect your ownership of land. People may have been traveling across your land for years to gain access to adjacent property. Your neighbor may have placed a fence across fifteen feet of your property line. Benefits and burdens run with the land - what you obtained when you acquired the property from the previous owner passes to you. The easements and encroachments, whether they be benefits or burdens upon your land, which existed at the time that you acquired the land continue, while you own the land.
An easement is the right of a no owner to use your land for a designated purpose (e.g., accessing the beach in your case). A right of way is a form of easement granted by the property owner which gives the right to travel over your land and to have the reasonable use and enjoyment of your property to others, as long as it is not inconsistent with your use and enjoyment of the land. These principles had their origin in traditional common law which governed, for example, the free flow of water or allowed neighboring landowners to travel over another’s property (an informal "road system"). Although ownership rights of property are lessened by an easement, society at large benefits due to the additional freedom of movement.
An encroachment is an unauthorized entry upon land of another; whether or not an obstruction is placed upon the land. Traditional common law created the action of trespass for injury to your property (trampling your flower bed in your case) when another interfered with your property rights by an unauthorized and direct breach of the boundaries of your land, enabling you to bring a lawsuit to recover damages for the intrusion. The converse is also true, when you trespass or encroach upon the land of another, you can be held responsible for damages. |
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