servitude

The state of a person who is subjected, voluntarily or otherwise, to another person as his servant. A charge or burden resting upon one estate for the benefit or advantage of another; a species of incorporeal right derived from the civil law (see servitus) and closely corresponding to the "easement" of the common-law, except that "servitude" rather has relation to the burden or the estate burdened, while "easement" refers to the benefit or advantage or the estate to which it accrues.

Classification

All servitudes which affect lands may be divided into two kinds,-personal and real.

@ personal servitude

Personal servitudes are those attached to the person for whose benefit they are established, and terminate with his life. This kind of servitude is of three sorts,-usufruct, use, and habitation.

@ real servitude

Real servitudes, which are also called "predial" or "landed" servitudes, are those which the owner of an estate enjoys on a neighboring estate for the benefit of his own estate. They are called "predial" or "landed" servitudes because, being established for the benefit of an estate, they are rather due to the estate than to the owner personally. Frost-Johnson Lumber Co. v. Sailing's Heirs, 150 La. 756, 91 So. 207, 245; Tide-Water Pipe Co. v. Bell, 280 Pa. 104, 124 A. 351, 354.

Real servitudes are divided, in the civil law, into rural servitudes and urban servitudes.

@ rural servitude

Rural servitudes are such as are established for the benefit of a landed estate; such, for example, as a right of way over the servient tenement, or of access to a spring, a coal-mine, a sand-pit, or a wood that is upon it.

@ urban servitude

Urban servitudes are such as are established for the benefit of one building over another. (But the buildings need not be in the city, as the name would apparently imply.) They are such as the right of support, or of view, sewer, or the like

+ urban servitude

In the civil law, city servitudes, or servitudes of houses are called "urban." They are the easements appertaining to the building and construction of houses; as, for instance, the right to light and air, or the right to build a house so as to throw the rain-water on a neighbor's house.

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Servitudes are also classed as positive and negative

@ positive servitude

A positive servitude is one which obliges the owner of the servient estate to permit or suffer something to be done on his property by another.

@ negative servitude

A negative servitude is one which does not bind the servient proprietor to permit something to be done upon his property by another, but merely restrains him from making a certain use of his property which would impair the easement enjoyed by the dominant tenement. Rowe v. Nally, 81 Md. 367, 32 A. 198.

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- involuntary servitude