easement vs ownership

 What is the difference between ownership and easement?

Our driveway goes through our front neighbor's side yard.
The builder's plot labeled the driveway as 12'x200' easement.
The county counted the area as part of our lot. We are
paying tax, mowing on the drive sides.

We also also have 30'x100' public sewage easement that runs
through our backyard (60' away from our house), from the county.
We are paying tax on that area.

If someone hurts himself in the easement, who's insurance
will pay for it?

 
empty wrote:

Owning it means you have title to it, and should be the one paying
taxes on it.  An easement means someone else owns it, but the
person/entity granted the easement has access to the land for a
specific purpose.  Typical cases are for utilities or as in your case,
a driveway.    The easement typically grants access needed to maintain,
whatever is there, like in the case of the utilities needing to be
repaired, replaced, etc.

In general, unless the easement says something about liability, if
someone slips and falls, it's the property owner's liability.   An
exception to that might be if there was something specific to the
easement that created an unsafe situation.  Like your drain line was
leaking in the easement area, created a hole, and then someone broke a
leg.

 trader4@optonline.net wrote:

That was what I figured to be. I wondered why the builder/develop
stated clearly that my drive way is on my neighbor's easement but county
included the area in my overall lot footage.

 says...

In this case you're the one with almost exclusive use of the land
did the builder screw up and put your driveway on someone else's
land and then "fix" it with an easement?).  I could go either way
on the taxes but realistically, he doesn't use the land.  So...

--
  Keith

 Keith Williams wrote:

The easement is the only way that we can get out of our lot when the
subdivision was developed. It was not a fix.