Easements grant neighbors, local businesses or utility companies access to private property. Easements can make a landlocked parcel accessible or allow one property owner to use resources present on an adjacent parcel, such as sources of surface water.
Easements can impact how people use and develop their properties. They can also sometimes affect the value of a property on the open market. Property owners eager to maximize the value of their real estate or optimize their use of real property may question whether an easement attached to their real estate holdings may eventually expire.
Does California law limit the duration of easements?
Easements don’t automatically expire
Nothing in California state code imposes a specific expiration date on valid easements. In some cases, easements can persist for decades and multiple generations of ownership.
Sometimes, property owners can assert that the party that holds the easement has effectively abandoned the easement by failing to use it for multiple years. Other times, the language of the easement itself may include an expiration date.
Barring one of those two scenarios, the easement may remain in place indefinitely. Real estate litigation may be necessary to remove an invalid easement. They could also potentially work with a business or neighbor to reach an arrangement that allows them to terminate the easement. Doing so could allow the owner to develop the property or may lead to an easier time maximizing the sale price for the property.
Property owners questioning their rights regarding an existing easement may benefit from reviewing deed and easement information with a real estate attorney. Although easements often do not expire on their own, the courts can remove abandoned or invalid easements from property records in qualifying circumstances.