Terminating a Easement

[727]

My question involves real estate located in the State of: Texas I have a party that has been using a mile of road through my property for a number of years to get to a landlocked property they own. There is no written, recorded or deeded easement. They do not live on the property. It is just used for recreation. I have numerous instances of them not closing gates in my property plus now more and more people I do not know but the owners do are using the road. They have purchased another property that joins theirs and is served by a county road. They want to keep using my road because it is in better shape and do not want to have to go to the expense of building a road on their own property. Question is. Can I give them a certain amount of time to construct a road and tell them at the end of that time the road through mine will be closed?

[PayrolGuy]

My question involves real estate located in the State of: Texas I have a party that has been using a mile of road through my property for a number of years to get to a landlocked property they own. There is no written, recorded or deeded easement. They do not live on the property. It is just used for recreation. I have numerous instances of them not closing gates in my property plus now more and more people I do not know but the owners do are using the road. They have purchased another property that joins theirs and is served by a county road. They want to keep using my road because it is in better shape and do not want to have to go to the expense of building a road on their own property. Question is. Can I give them a certain amount of time to construct a road and tell them at the end of that time the road through mine will be closed?

You can tell them that effective INSERT DATE HERE that the gates will get new locks and that they will be considered trespassers after that date. For that matter, you can go change the locks right now if there is really no current easement.

ETA:You might want to read the first several pages of this.

https://assets.recenter.tamu.edu/doc...ticles/422.pdf

[pg1067]

I have a party that has been using a mile of road through my property for a number of years to get to a landlocked property they own.

"A number of years" implies more than one year, but beyond that, it's a vague as "a while." How long has this person ("party"?) been using this road? Did you own the property when he/she started using the road? If so, has this always been done with your permission?

Can I give them a certain amount of time to construct a road and tell them at the end of that time the road through mine will be closed?

Sure you can. You can tell pretty much anyone anything you like. Determining whether you have the legal right to exclude this person (or these persons) depends on the answers to the questions I asked.

[budwad]

My question involves real estate located in the State of: Texas I have a party that has been using a mile of road through my property for a number of years to get to a landlocked property they own. There is no written, recorded or deeded easement. They do not live on the property. It is just used for recreation. I have numerous instances of them not closing gates in my property plus now more and more people I do not know but the owners do are using the road. They have purchased another property that joins theirs and is served by a county road. They want to keep using my road because it is in better shape and do not want to have to go to the expense of building a road on their own property. Question is. Can I give them a certain amount of time to construct a road and tell them at the end of that time the road through mine will be closed?

There are several legal doctrines that can come into play here based on your answers to these questions (some of which have already been asked).

How long have they been using the road? That includes both your ownership and your predecessors.

Was the use of the road by permission of either you or your predecessors?

The statute of limitations, to get a prescriptive easement in Texas is 10 years required period of continuous and uninterrupted use of the road. So it is important to know when they started the use of the road and was it continuous and uninterrupted (as defined by easement law).

Without a granted easement or an easement by plat (a subdivision map), the only way they could establish an easement is by prescriptive use. That would take a court action to quiet title.

But if the use of the road was by permission by you or your predecessors, then the law recognizes that as a license to use the property and that bestows no legal right to an easement. If that were the case, you could revoke the license at any time.

But it can be a bit more complicated . Let's say that these people using your property to access their landlocked property (without permission) could establish that they have met the requirements to be granted a prescriptive easement by a court. Now that they own an adjacent property to the landlocked property, the case law says that the easement cannot be used to access the adjacent property. The easement cannot be extended to any other property without the express agreement of the servient estate (that is you). So while they may be able to use a prescriptive easement to have access to the landlocked property, they can't use it to access the new property.

Your title is terminating an easement. This is not about terminating an easement. It is really about whether or not these people can establish whether or not they can prevail in court to get a prescriptive easement in the first place to keep using the road. And if they can, it will not extend to the new property.

[727]

The road to their property has been used for over 50 years that I know of. 5 years ago I bought another piece of property next to me that the road went partially through. Part of the deal to buy the property was that I had to move the entire road so that it would be entirely on my property. So the road has moved around some during that time. This is ranch land. 15 years ago I was given by a neighbor 2.5 acres that a quarter of a mile of the road went through. So now I have the entire 1.1 miles of the unimproved road through my property. They have a 3 hunting type cabins on the property that they access through mine. They bought land and a house that is on a county maintained road that joins their original property. So now their entire property is under one fence. A straight line from where they enter their new portion is less than a mile to their cabins. From where they enter mine to their cabins is like I said 1.1 miles. So it is actually closer for them to make a road in their new property to the cabins. If all of that makes sense. I have never actually given anyone permission to drive the road. It was here for the most part when we bought the place in 1963.

[pg1067]

Sounds like you're dealing with a license, rather than an easement. You should take the relevant documents to a local real estate attorney for advice.

[727]

i talked to a real estate attorney. He does not do litigation just deeds etc. He told me in America you can do whatever you want to do. But that does not mean it is legal or right. He told me not to get an attorney as it will end up costing me more than it is worth. That being said I said what if I don't do anymore repairs on the road and it become impassable? Can the others repair the road so they can use it if I say no? He said I can tell them they have no right to work on my private land and that may be a way to make them use their own property for getting to their cabins.

[budwad]

You can gate off the road and lock it. If these persons want to make an issue of it , they will have to go to court. They have no recorded easement to enforce. They will have to go to court to resolve the issue. Not withstanding what the real estate attorney told you.

Find another attorney that practices in easement law.

[pg1067]

i talked to a real estate attorney. He does not do litigation just deeds etc. He told me in America you can do whatever you want to do.

That's the point where you should have walked out of his office or hung up the phone.

what if I don't do anymore repairs on the road and it become impassable?

We have no way of predicting the future in this regard.

Can the others repair the road so they can use it if I say no?

We have no way of knowing what abilities are possessed by persons unknown to us.

Find yourself an attorney who isn't an idiot and try again.