What happens to an easement if the same person ends up owning both properties it involves?

When one person or entity comes to own both the dominant property, the one benefiting from the easement, and the servient property, the one burdened by it, the easement is generally extinguished by operation of law through what's called merger. The underlying logic is simple: an easement exists to let one landowner use another landowner's property, and that concept doesn't make sense once both properties belong to the same owner — you can't hold an easement over your own land.

The detail that surprises people is that this extinguishment doesn't automatically come back if the properties are later separated again, say by selling off one of the two parcels. Once merged and extinguished, the old easement is generally gone for good — a new easement would typically need to be deliberately created and registered again if the same kind of access or use is still wanted after the properties are split apart.

Anyone buying properties with the intention of later re-selling one of two commonly owned parcels, where an old easement between them used to exist, should plan ahead and put a fresh easement in place at the time of the resale, rather than assuming the original one will simply revive.