There are many different ways to give the rights to use your land over to other people without actually selling them the property, there are also some restrictions that can be placed upon your property without your knowledge. These rights are commonplace, and they can often be very valuable, or lucrative. The three common ways to give rights to use your land to another are easements, licenses, and profits. These three different types of rights are pretty straightforward, if you take the time to understand them. It is very important to keep track of these rights, because real property often has a long and convoluted history of prior owners and transactions.
An easement is a right to use land or a portion of the land owned by another person for a specific purpose and is either perpetual or for a specific period of time. The most common form of an easement is the easement that is used in order to give someone else access to their own property. For instance, if farmer Joe can't get to his property without crossing your property, because his property was landlocked, he would need to obtain an easement from you in order to use your property to access his own. You can sometimes run into trouble with this kind of easement as is seen in a recent Supreme Court hearing in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In it, two property owners granted an easement in 1972 to a subdivision. Without this easement, it would have been impossible to get to the subdivision as it was landlocked. In 1981, the first couple who bought property in the subdivision tried to get the courts to decree that only people who lived in the subdivision could use the easement. This would land lock many properties in the area, including the property that the easement originally went across. The couple lost their case. Landlocked property can be a tricky matter when you don't want to grant the easement, and also when you want to restrict it.
