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right of commons

property law
Also known as: profit, profit à prendre

Learn about this topic in these articles:

development of commons

  • In commons

    For centuries this right of commons conflicted with the lord’s right to “approve” (i.e., appropriate for his own use) any of his waste, provided he left enough land to support the commoners’ livestock. In the 19th century the right of approvement was in effect assumed by the government.…

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relation to easement

  • Hugo Grotius
    In property law: Easements and profits

    An easement in Anglo-American law is a privilege to do something on the land of another or to do something on one’s own land that would otherwise be actionable by one’s neighbors (known as an affirmative easement). Exceptionally, it is the right to prevent…

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rights in property law

  • In property

    … (such as rights of way), profits (such as the right to take minerals or timber), real covenants (such as a promise to pay a homeowners’ association fee), and equitable servitudes (such as a promise to use the property for residential purposes only). The civil law does not have as many…

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types of servitudes

  • In servitude

    Profits give someone the right to enter and remove natural resources (e.g., sand and gravel) from the land of another. Servitudes usually arise out of agreements between owners and users but may also be created by prescription (i.e., by open use of someone else’s property…

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easement, in Anglo-American property law, a right granted by one property owner to another to use a part of his land for a specific purpose.

An easement may be created expressly by a written deed of grant conveying to another the right to use for a specific purpose a certain parcel of land. An easement may also be created when one sells his land to another but reserves for himself the right to future use of a portion of that land. An easement may also be created by implication, when, for example, a term descriptive of an easement is incidentally included in a deed (such as “passageway”—a section of land to be used for passage). An easement by implication also arises when the owner of two or more adjacent parcels of land sells one lot; the buyer acquires an easement to that visible property of the seller necessary to the buyer’s use and enjoyment of his lot, such as a roadway or drainage duct. When created in this manner the easement also arises as an easement of necessity.

In most of the United States and England, statutes permit the creation of an easement by prescription, which arises by virtue of a long, continuous usage of the property of another by a landowner, his ancestors, or prior owners. The length of time necessary for such continued use to ripen into an easement by prescription is specified by the applicable state statute.

When use of the easement is restricted to either one or a few individuals, it is a private easement. Use of a public easement, such as public highways or a portion of private land dedicated by a present or past owner as a public park (also known as a dedication), is not restricted.

An owner of an easement is referred to as the owner of the dominant tenement. The owner on whose land the easement exists is the owner of the servient tenement.