Thirty (or so) years ago, my Grandfather and the next door neighbor built a bridge over a creek that flows through our properties. (We currently own my Grandfather's property). The bridge is built on the neighbor's property, and the driveway to the bridge is our property. The neighbor effectively has no access to his property without the bridge and the use of our driveway, unless he were to acquire access from the neighbor on the opposite side. The agreement has always been that both parties may use both the bridge and the driveway. It is my understanding that we both have prescriptive easements, us for his bridge, him for our driveway.
In April 2008 the neighbor abandoned the property. It has been on the market, on and off, since then and has been empty. Along with the legitimate visitors, (realtors, buyers, etc) there have been several instances of people over there who have no business being there. The house has been broken into twice, things have been stolen off the property, and odd people have been seen wandering the property in the evenings.
We would like to put up a gate at the top of the driveway to keep the so called "riff raff" out. We have no interest in preventing realtors or potential buyers from from using the driveway, nor do we foresee any problems with a new neighbor using our driveway. Can we gate the top of our driveway in the meantime? Does the neighbor lose their prescriptive easement for our driveway since no one has used it in almost 2 years? If/when the house is bank owned, does the bank then have an easement and are we required to give them an easement? Are there potential liabilities for us in granting or not granting access? If they do not have an easement anymore, are we required to grant access in the future?
Thanks for your help!

