Land Law exam notes written from textbooks and lectures for Easements and Covenants. Formatted to be memorised and contains all the necessary information to achieve a 2:1 or 1st on the exam.
*-Easement: An easement is a right over one piece of land for the benefit of another piece of
land (i.e. Right of way over a neighbours land to get to the main road).
Qualities of an Easement
-It is an incorporeal hereditament.
-Main features of an easement:
1) They are proprietary rights: Therefore, it is not just a property right but is part of the
fee simple so a connection to the land is necessary. That is, it cannot exist in gross
(unattached to land).
2) You cannot overreach an easement because it is contractual in nature.
3) The easement benefits the land not the person: if you sell the land the easement
will be part of the transaction and bind a third party.
**-To be a legal easement it must be made by deed in order to bind a third party (or
else it is a license).
Terminology of Easements
*-Must describe an easement in the exam using this terminology.
-The Grantor gives the right to an easement whilst the Grantee takes and enjoys it.
-Dominant Tenement: The land that benefits from the easement.
-Servient Tenement: There to facilitate the access and the use of the dominant tenement.
-Positive Easement: The benefits of an easements are enjoyed by the occupants of the
dominant tenement performing some activity such as walking across the servient tenement.
-Negative Tenement: Arises where dominant tenement just sits and passively enjoys the
support it gets from the servient tenement.
1)Easements
*-There are four essential characteristics of an easement:
Re Ellenbrough Park [1956]: Ellneboroguh Park and its surrounding property was an open
and unbuilt on piece of land. The owners of the land sold some of the plots surrounding the
park to the property developers and included in the conveyance the right to enjoy the park
subject to the payment of a fair and just proportion fo the costs to maintain the park. Many
years later the plots had been sold and included in the conveyances the right to enjoy the park
subject to maintenance fees.
Held (Legal Principle): CA held the purchasers (and their successors) of the plots had
easements over the collective garden. Consequently, the court recognised four characteristics
of an easements that are required for one to exist:
1) There must be a dominant and servient land.
2) The easement must accommodate the dominant land.
3) The easement must be owned or occupied by different people (different owners for
dominant and servient lands).
4) An easement must be capable of forming the subject matter of a grant.
*-If any one of those characteristics is missing then the right is not an easement.
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