An easement in gross is the right to use someone else’s land that belongs to a person or company rather than to an adjoining parcel. Utility and pipeline rights of way are the classic examples: there is a servient tenement but no dominant tenement.
How the exam tests easement in gross
These mirror the phrasing you will see on test day. Answer them, then read the explanation whether or not you got it right.
Easement in gross: exam questions1/1
Property ownership
Which of the following is NOT an appurtenance?
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Every easement in gross question, answered
Every question above with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Read the explanations for the ones you answered correctly too. A lucky guess and knowing the rule look identical on a score report. These are sample questions from our larger bank.
1. Which of the following is NOT an appurtenance?
ARiparian water rights attached to the land
BA utility company’s easement in grosscorrect
CMineral rights that have never been severed
DA recorded right of way benefiting the parcel
Why: An easement in gross benefits a person or company, not a parcel, so it has no dominant tenement and does not run with the land. The other three attach to the land itself.
Property ownership
Where easement in gross sits in the exam vocabulary
Easement in gross is a easement in real property, and so are easement appurtenant, easement by necessity and prescriptive easement. That matters more than it sounds: a multiple-choice item builds its wrong answers out of siblings like these, because they are the options that look plausible to someone who has learned the category but not the distinction. If easement in gross appears as the correct answer, expect to see easement appurtenant and easement by necessity on the same screen.
Easement in gross does not stand on its own: it assumes you already know encumbrance. Questions that look like they are testing easement in gross are often really testing whether that idea is solid underneath it.
The exam most often tries to catch you by putting easement in gross next to easement appurtenant and license (land use). Each of those is a real concept sitting close enough to be tempting, and the question usually turns on the single feature that separates them rather than on the definition of either one. Read the contrast, not the term.
Words that mean easement in gross, but only sometimes
These are conditional synonyms. Each one is interchangeable with easement in gross in the context stated beside it and misleading everywhere else, which is precisely the kind of distinction an exam item is built on.
utility easement: equivalent to easement in gross in when the holder is a commercial utility, the most common form.
