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Acquired by long-continued use over a statutory period

Prescriptive easement

A prescriptive easement is earned by using someone else's land openly, continuously, and without permission for the period the state's statute sets — it grants a right to keep using the land, not ownership of it.

Dispute doctrine

  • Open and notorious use (visible, not hidden)
  • Continuous use throughout the statutory period
  • Adverse / hostile use — that is, without the owner's permission
  • Use for the full statutory period set by state law (highly state-specific)

A prescriptive easement is the easement-law cousin of adverse possession. Instead of taking title, the user acquires a right to continue a particular use. The classic elements are use that is open and notorious, continuous, adverse (hostile / non-permissive), and carried on for the state's statutory period. The statutory period is the single most state-variable feature in all of easement law: it ranges from five years in California to roughly twenty or twenty-one years in some states, and several states layer on extra requirements such as paying property taxes on the strip used. Critically, permission defeats a prescriptive claim — a recorded grant of permission, or even a posted notice in some states, can stop the clock and protect a servient owner.

The elements

  • Open and notorious use (visible, not hidden)
  • Continuous use throughout the statutory period
  • Adverse / hostile use — that is, without the owner's permission
  • Use for the full statutory period set by state law (highly state-specific)

Statutory period by state (Wave 1)

Verified against primary-source statutes on 2026-06-16. Wave-2 and Wave-3 states are coming — we do not publish unverified state-specific figures.

StatePeriodStatute
California5 yrsCal. Code Civ. Proc. §325
Texas10 yrsTex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §16.026
Florida20 yrsFlorida prescriptive easement — common law (no controlling statute)
New York10 yrsN.Y. C.P.L.R. §212(a)
Pennsylvania21 yrs42 Pa.C.S. §5530
Illinois20 yrs735 ILCS 5/13-101
Ohio21 yrsOhio Rev. Code §2305.04
Georgia7 yrsO.C.G.A. §44-9-1
North Carolina20 yrsN.C. Gen. Stat. §1-40
Michigan15 yrsMich. Comp. Laws §600.5801(4)

Note: Georgia's figure is the seven-year private-way period (O.C.G.A. §44-9-1) — the usual driveway/path scenario; its general prescription period is twenty years. Florida's twenty-year period is common-law (no controlling statute). A long period favors a servient owner defeating a claim; a short one favors a long-time user. This is not a ranking.

Landmark case-law

Verified citations are the moat. Below are the case slots for this doctrine across our Wave-1 states — real cites where verified, and an honest “pending” marker everywhere else. We never invent a case name.

Case-law pending verification

Landmark case-law for this doctrine in this state has not yet been verified against a primary source and signed off by our reviewing attorney (Gate 3). We do not publish unverified case names — invented citations are the one thing this site refuses to do.

Sources cited on this page

Primary sources are state-legislature and Cornell LII pages. Justia, Nolo, and FindLaw are used only as supplementary cross-checks, never as the primary citation.