Boundary and Easement Disputes Between Property Owners in Texas

Two kinds of fights, two kinds of lawsuits

Disputes between neighboring owners come in two forms. A boundary dispute asks where one tract ends and the next begins: a fence, a parking lot or a building encroaches, or two surveys disagree. An easement dispute asks whether one owner has the right to use part of the other's land for a purpose, usually access, drainage, parking or utilities, and how far that right extends. The two overlap when a neighbor claims to own a strip by adverse possession or claims a right to cross it by prescription, so a case often pleads both.

How boundary disputes are decided

Property Code § 22.001 states that a trespass to try title action is the method of determining title to lands, tenements or other real property, and abolishes the old action of ejectment. Trespass to try title has formal pleading and proof requirements: the plaintiff must prove title by a regular chain from the sovereign, by a superior title from a common source, by limitations, or by prior possession. In a boundary case the fight is usually about which survey correctly locates calls in the deeds, and the case is decided on the testimony of licensed surveyors applying the rules for following the footsteps of the original surveyor.

In 2007 the Legislature added § 37.004(c) to the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Notwithstanding Property Code § 22.001, a party may obtain a declaratory judgment when the sole issue concerning title to real property is the determination of the proper boundary line between adjoining properties. That change matters for two reasons. The declaratory judgment procedure is simpler, and § 37.009 lets the court award costs and reasonable and necessary attorney's fees as are equitable and just, which the trespass to try title statute does not. If the dispute involves more than the line, for example a claim of adverse possession to the disputed strip, trespass to try title still governs, and fees are generally not recoverable.

The five ways an easement arises in Texas

Express grant or reservation

Most commercial easements are written: a recorded access easement across a neighboring parcel, a shared driveway agreement, a utility easement, a reciprocal easement agreement among the parcels in a shopping center. An easement is an interest in land, so the grant must be in writing and signed to satisfy the statute of frauds, and it must describe the servient land and the easement's purpose with reasonable certainty. The document controls location, width, permitted uses, maintenance and whether the easement is exclusive. Most express-easement disputes are disputes about what the words mean, read against the circumstances when the easement was created.

Necessity

When one parcel is landlocked after a larger tract is divided, Texas implies a roadway easement by necessity across the parcel that was part of the same tract. In Hamrick v. Ward (2014) the Texas Supreme Court confirmed that the necessity easement, not the prior-use easement, is the doctrine for roadway access to a landlocked, previously unified parcel, and restated the three elements: unity of ownership of the dominant and servient estates before severance; the claimed easement is a present necessity and not a mere convenience; and the necessity existed when the two estates were severed. The Court applied those elements again in Staley Family Partnership v. Stiles (2016), where the claimant lost because it could not prove the necessity existed at the moment of an 1866 severance. The party claiming the easement bears the burden on every element, and the necessity must continue; a parcel that later gains public road access loses the implied easement.

Implication from prior use

A prior-use easement arises when, before a tract was divided, the owner used part of it to benefit another part in a way that was apparent and continuous, and the use is reasonably necessary to the use and enjoyment of the parcel that was conveyed. It is the doctrine for utility lines, drainage and similar uses that existed at the time of the split, and Hamrick confines roadway access claims to the necessity doctrine instead.

Estoppel

An easement by estoppel arises when the owner of the servient land communicated a representation, by words or conduct, that an easement exists; the other party believed it; and the other party relied on it, typically by building or improving in reliance. A seller who points to a driveway and says the buyer will always have access, after which the buyer builds a loading dock oriented to that driveway, is the classic case. Courts apply the doctrine cautiously because it creates an interest in land without a writing.

Prescription

A prescriptive easement is the easement counterpart of adverse possession. The claimant must show use of the land that is open, notorious, continuous, exclusive and adverse to the owner for ten years. Exclusivity is the element that defeats most claims: a driveway the owner and the neighbor both used is not exclusive, and permissive use never ripens into a prescriptive right. Where the claim is to own the strip rather than to use it, the adverse possession statutes apply instead; those are covered in adverse possession claims in Texas.

What the court decides in an easement case

• Existence and location. Whether an easement exists at all and where it runs. For an express easement the document controls; for an implied one, the historic use fixes the location.
• Scope. What uses are permitted and whether the dominant owner has overburdened the easement, for example by converting a residential driveway easement into the truck entrance for a distribution center, or by extending it to serve an additional parcel the easement was never meant to benefit.
• Interference. Whether the servient owner has unreasonably interfered, by gating, fencing, parking on or building over the easement. The servient owner keeps the right to use its own land in ways that do not unreasonably interfere.
• Maintenance and cost sharing. Usually governed by the document; absent agreement, the dominant owner generally maintains the easement.
• Termination. Whether the easement ended by its terms, by abandonment shown through intent and conduct, by merger when one owner acquired both parcels, or, for a necessity easement, because the necessity ceased.

Remedies

The usual remedy is a declaration of the parties' rights combined with an injunction: an order to remove the gate, stop parking on the easement or stop using it for the expanded purpose. Because interference with access to commercial property causes losses that are hard to measure after the fact, courts grant temporary injunctions during the case where the applicant shows a probable right and probable injury, and the applicant posts a bond. How those applications work is covered in emergency relief: TROs and temporary injunctions in Texas. Damages are available for lost use, lost rents or the cost of relocating improvements, and for trespass where a neighbor's structure sits on the owner's land. Attorney's fees are recoverable in a pure boundary case brought under § 37.004(c), and under an easement agreement that provides for them; otherwise each side generally bears its own.

Example

Suppose a Carrollton warehouse owner's only truck access to a public road is a 30-foot paved drive across the adjoining parcel, used since 1998 when a developer split one tract into the two parcels and sold them separately without recording any easement. The adjoining parcel is sold in 2026 to a buyer who installs a gate and offers to sell an access easement for a six-figure price. The warehouse owner sues for a declaration of an easement by necessity, pleading in the alternative prior use and prescription, and applies for a temporary injunction to keep the drive open. The 1998 deeds show unity of ownership before severance, the plat and aerial photographs show the warehouse parcel had no other access to a public road in 1998 and has none now, and the paved drive has carried the warehouse's trucks ever since. The court grants the temporary injunction, and at trial declares a roadway easement by necessity along the existing drive. The gate comes down. Had the warehouse parcel had frontage on a public road, however inconvenient, the necessity claim would have failed and the owner would have been left to negotiate or to prove the far harder prescriptive claim.

Evidence that decides these cases

• Every deed in both chains of title back to the common owner, and the plats and field notes they reference.
• The surveys, including the surveyor's notes, monuments found and the basis for each call.
• Aerial photographs and dated site photographs showing fences, drives and structures over time.
• Recorded easement agreements, reciprocal easement agreements and title commitments with their Schedule B exceptions.
• Correspondence in which an owner acknowledged the line, granted permission, or objected to a use. Permission defeats prescription; acquiescence in a line can establish a boundary by agreement.
• Tax records showing who has paid taxes on the disputed strip.

When to involve a litigator

Before responding to a neighbor's survey, before building near a disputed line, and immediately when access is blocked, because the temporary injunction standard rewards the party who moves while the harm is still provable and avoidable. A litigator will also decide whether the case belongs in trespass to try title or declaratory judgment, which affects both the proof and whether fees can be recovered. Disputes about a cloud on the title itself are handled through quiet title actions in Texas. Tina Wysk represents owners, developers and tenants in boundary, easement and access disputes in Dallas-Fort Worth; the firm's real estate litigation practice handles the injunction and the title case together.