Property ownership: joint tenancy vs tenancy in common

Incorrect: Distance ranks below monuments in the order of priority, so the written 200 feet gives way to the tree.

Correct: A fixed natural monument such as the oak tree outranks a measured distance, so the line runs to the tree at 215 feet.

Incorrect: There is no rule that splits the difference; the boundary goes to the monument, not to a midpoint.

Incorrect: A mismatch between a call and the ground does not void the deed; courts apply the priority of calls and keep the conveyance.

Incorrect: No lawsuit is needed: the priority of calls already resolves the conflict in favor of the tree.

Correct: An easement appurtenant is attached to the dominant land, so it passes with B's servient parcel to Buyer C even though the deed is silent; recording gives C notice.

Incorrect: A recorded easement does not shrink into a revocable license just because the servient land changed hands.

Incorrect: Owner A already holds the right, so there is nothing new to negotiate with Buyer C.

Incorrect: Owner A does not need a lawsuit; the right was never lost, so there is nothing to restore.

Incorrect: Leaving the easement out of the new deed does not extinguish it; release, merger or abandonment would be needed.

Incorrect: Adverse possession needs exclusive possession; sharing a driveway the owner also uses is use, not possession, so no title passes.

Correct: Twenty years of open, unpermitted use of part of a driveway gives a right to keep using it, which is a prescriptive easement, not ownership.

Incorrect: An easement by necessity arises only when a parcel split from common ownership is landlocked; nothing here says that happened.

Incorrect: An equitable lien secures a debt; the neighbor never paid or lent anything, so there is nothing for a lien to secure.

Incorrect: After a prescriptive period has run, the owner cannot simply evict the neighbor, and self-help eviction is not the remedy anyway.

Incorrect: Time alone is not enough; the use also had to be adverse, and permission removes that element.

Incorrect: An oral permission creates a license, which the owner can revoke; it is not an irrevocable right.

Incorrect: Open and notorious use is only one element; permissive use still fails the hostility requirement.

Incorrect: Prescriptive easements arise without any recorded document, so lack of recording is the wrong reason.

Correct: Use with the owner's permission is not hostile, so the neighbor holds a revocable license and the prescriptive claim fails.

Incorrect: The high-water mark fits the lake, but the owner on a non-navigable stream owns out to the center, not just to the bank.

Incorrect: This reverses the two rules: the navigable lake stops at the shore, and the non-navigable stream goes to its center.

Incorrect: Center-line ownership fits the small stream but not the navigable lake, whose bed is held by the state.

Correct: Owners on navigable water generally stop at the high-water mark because the state holds the bed in trust; owners on a non-navigable stream own to its center line.

Incorrect: The stream half is wrong: a non-navigable stream owner takes the bed to the center line, not just to the edge.

Incorrect: A volume above the lot can be described by elevations and vertical planes from the lot lines; no new ground boundary is needed.

Incorrect: Air rights can be sold apart from the surface; that is how towers are built over rail yards and existing buildings.

Correct: Air rights are real property that can be severed and sold, and a description of a defined volume between two elevations validly identifies them.

Incorrect: An owner can sell a slice of air space, such as 100 to 300 feet; nothing requires selling the whole column.

Incorrect: A deeded transfer of a defined air space is an estate in land, not a revocable license.

Incorrect: The rectangular survey uses townships, ranges and sections, none of which appear here.

Correct: Courses with bearings (N 45 degrees E) and distances from a starting point back to that point are the metes-and-bounds method.

Incorrect: Lot and block refers to a lot number on a recorded subdivision plat, which this description never mentions.

Incorrect: Area is not required in a metes-and-bounds description; the closed courses and distances define the parcel.

Incorrect: A plat description also points to a recorded map; this one is built from bearings and distances instead.

Correct: A mature orchard is a perennial planting that is part of the land, while the tenant's annual vegetables are emblements, personal property of the tenant.

Incorrect: Only the annual vegetables are emblements; fruit trees that produce year after year are real property.

Incorrect: This reverses the rule: the trees are real property and the annual crop is personal.

Incorrect: The tenant's annual vegetables do not pass with the land; they belong to the tenant who planted them.

Incorrect: The tenant planted the vegetables, not the orchard, so the orchard stays real property.

Incorrect: A portable above-ground pool is designed to be taken down, so it is personal property, unlike the cabinet.

Correct: The built-in cabinet and the mirror screwed into the vanity are attached and adapted to the home, so both are fixtures that pass with the sale.

Incorrect: Potted plants and a portable above-ground pool are movable personal property, so not all four items convey.

Incorrect: Potted plants sit in containers and can be carried away, so they are personal property.

Incorrect: The cabinet and screwed-in mirror are fixtures, so it is wrong that nothing passes with the land.

Correct: "So long as" is durational language that creates a fee simple determinable; when the retail use begins, title returns to the grantor automatically through the possibility of reverter.

Incorrect: A use limit like this is a valid defeasible fee, not a void restraint, so B does not hold a fee simple absolute.

Incorrect: A fee simple subject to a condition subsequent uses "but if" or "on condition that" wording and needs the grantor to act; "so long as" ends automatically.

Incorrect: A determinable fee ends on its own when the limit is breached; no court order is needed.

Incorrect: The deed gives B a fee measured by the use, not an estate for anyone's life.

Incorrect: D does receive A's one-third; a joint tenant can sell an interest during life.

Incorrect: D took title at a different time by a different deed, so D lacks the unities needed to be a joint tenant.

Incorrect: The joint tenancy between B and C survives because they still share the four unities with each other.

Correct: A's sale severs only A's share, so D holds one-third as a tenant in common while B and C keep survivorship between their two-thirds.

Incorrect: Severance is limited to the share conveyed; it does not break the survivorship link between B and C.

Correct: A metes-and-bounds description must return to the point of beginning; this one stops after three courses and leaves the parcel open.

Incorrect: Meridians and baselines belong to the rectangular survey system, not to a metes-and-bounds description.

Incorrect: Acreage is not required, and the rectangular survey is a different method altogether.

Incorrect: A lot and block number refers to a recorded plat; a metes-and-bounds description does not need one.

Incorrect: Monuments mark corners and points along the boundary, not the center of the parcel.

Incorrect: Redirecting rent assumes the lease survives, but it ended with the life tenant's death.

Incorrect: The remainderman never agreed to the lease and is not bound to honor the remaining three years.

Incorrect: The life tenant could not grant more than an estate measured by their own life, so the five-year term cannot run out.

Incorrect: No periodic tenancy arises automatically; the charity can offer a new lease, but this lease is over.

Correct: A life tenant can lease only what they hold, so the lease ends when the measuring life ends and the charity takes free of it.

Incorrect: Extracting resources is not an ordinary incident of a life estate, unless mines were already open when it began.

Incorrect: A life tenant must preserve the property for the remainderman, not exploit it for the highest return.

Incorrect: The remainderman can act during the life estate to stop waste; there is no need to wait.

Correct: Cutting timber and mining for profit without consent damages the remainder, which is waste, and the remainderman can sue to stop it and recover damages.

Incorrect: Eminent domain is a government power; a private remainderman cannot use it to end a life estate.

Incorrect: There is nothing to renegotiate: title vested in the survivor by operation of law.

Incorrect: A will cannot pass a joint tenant's share; survivorship defeats the devise.

Correct: Survivorship takes effect at death, before the will operates, so the surviving joint tenant owns the whole parcel.

Incorrect: Partition is a remedy between living co-owners; there is no remaining co-owner here, only the survivor.

Incorrect: The child does not become a co-owner, because the deceased's share passed to the survivor at the moment of death.

Incorrect: Severalty means one owner; two grantees cannot hold in severalty.

Correct: When a deed names two unmarried grantees without saying how they hold, the default is a tenancy in common.

Incorrect: Tenancy by the entirety is only for married couples, and these friends are unmarried.

Incorrect: Joint tenancy has to be stated clearly in the deed; it is not presumed.

Incorrect: Nothing in the deed limits the estate to anyone's life, so no life estate is created.

Correct: A lease with fixed start and end dates is an estate for years, and it ends on its end date without any notice.

Incorrect: Indefinite duration until notice describes a periodic tenancy, not this fixed-term lease.

Incorrect: Eviction is needed only if the tenant stays after the term; the lease itself ends on schedule.

Incorrect: An estate for years does not convert by itself; only a holdover accepted by the landlord can create a periodic tenancy.

Incorrect: The tenant does not need to give notice; the term simply expires on November 30.

Incorrect: Death of either party does not end an estate for years; that rule applies to a tenancy at will.

Incorrect: Nothing converts the fixed term into a periodic tenancy; the original three-year term continues.

Incorrect: The landlord cannot end the lease at will; the term continues against T's estate.

Correct: A lease for a fixed term is an estate for years that survives the tenant's death, so T's estate holds the remaining two years.

Incorrect: Death does not void a lease for a fixed term; the landlord's and tenant's rights pass to their successors.

Correct: Commercial easements in gross, such as utility lines, can be assigned, while a personal easement in gross belongs only to its holder.

Incorrect: The utility's commercial easement can be assigned to another company, so it is wrong that neither can move.

Incorrect: Easements in gross benefit a person or company, not a parcel, so neither runs with land as a benefit.

Incorrect: The friend's personal easement cannot be sold or assigned, so not both are transferable.

Incorrect: This reverses the rule: the commercial easement is the assignable one, the personal one is not.

Incorrect: An owner cannot hold an easement over their own land, so the easement does not stay active.

Incorrect: An ended easement does not float to benefit other neighbors; a later split would need a new grant.

Incorrect: Merger ends the easement entirely; it does not become a license.

Correct: When one person comes to own both the dominant and servient parcels, the easement merges into the fee and ends.

Incorrect: Owning both parcels removes any need for access across someone else's land, so no easement by necessity arises.