easements. Legal or Equitable?

Law revision, exam and homework help.

Announcements Posted on
Please change your TSR password 23-05-2013
Enter our travel-writing competition for the chance to win a Nikon 1 J3 camera 20-05-2013
IMPORTANT: You must wait until midnight (morning exams)/4.30AM (afternoon exams) to discuss Edexcel exams and until 1pm/6pm the following day for STEP and IB exams. Please read before posting, including for rules for practical and oral exams. 28-04-2013
Sign in to Reply
  1. theamazingrob's Avatar
    • New Member
    • Posts: 2
    easements. Legal or Equitable?
    Hello everyone,

    I have a query as follows..


    My question is as to whether implied easements (necessity, common intention and via wheeldon and burrows) are equitable or legal. I have read that they can be both, however I was under the impression that legal easements can only be created by statute, prescription or deed. How would an easement created via wheeldon and burrows for example be a legal interest? meaning that it could be transferred as an overriding interest in an conveyance where the servient land is registered.
    Further to this if a licence was to be made an easement upon conveyance under S.62. Would this be created by statute, therefore a legal interest?

    Any help would be much appreciated!
  2. vnupe's Avatar
    • Overlord in Training
    • Posts: 3,184
    Re: easements. Legal or Equitable?
    I think you worked out an answer to your first question... But as to your second, think of the cases of King v David and Ashburn Astalt (sp.) v Arnold. The if a personal right like a licence (say a person has a contractual licence) to live/work in a building and a conveyance has occurred but the old owner has made the licence a condition of the sale or conveyance and the new owner has agreed to the licence in the sale then they are estopped (according to Ashburn) from reneging on the deal.
    Hope this helps
  3. gwen_m's Avatar
    • New Member
    • Posts: 2
    Re: easements. Legal or Equitable?
    Implied easements are created by implication into a conveyance (of some other right). If implied into a legal conveyance (i.e. deed + registration), they are legal. If implied into an equitable conveyance (written contract taking effect in equity), they are equitable. If legal, they can be overriding under sch 3 LRA, para 3.
  4. mja's Avatar
    • Exalted Member
    • Location: Nowhere
    • Posts: 383
    Re: easements. Legal or Equitable?
    (Original post by gwen_m)
    Implied easements are created by implication into a conveyance (of some other right). If implied into a legal conveyance (i.e. deed + registration), they are legal. If implied into an equitable conveyance (written contract taking effect in equity), they are equitable. If legal, they can be overriding under sch 3 LRA, para 3.
    This. And NB that s62 only works to imply a grant into a conveyance, not a contract - whereas other modes (Wheeldon, necessity, common intention) can work with a contract too.
Sign in to Reply
Share this discussion:  
Article updates
Moderators

We have a brilliant team of more than 60 volunteers looking after discussions on The Student Room, helping to make it a fun, safe and useful place to hang out.

Reputation gems:
The Reputation gems seen here indicate how well reputed the user is, red gem indicate negative reputation and green indicates a good rep.
Post rating score:
These scores show if a post has been positively or negatively rated by our members.