Who is responsible for maintenance and snow removal costs on a shared driveway easement in Ontario?

It depends first and foremost on what the registered easement agreement actually says. A well-drafted shared driveway easement should specify exactly how maintenance and snow removal costs are split between the properties, and that language governs. Where the agreement addresses this clearly, it's simply a matter of following what was agreed.

The problem arises when the original agreement is silent, vague, or was never properly documented in the first place, which is common with older or informally created shared driveways. In that situation, neighbours often end up sharing costs proportionally to their use in practice, but there's no automatic, universal rule guaranteeing that outcome, and disagreements are genuinely common precisely because the underlying documents so often don't spell this out clearly, leaving each side with a different view of what's fair.

Because ambiguity here is a frequent source of real neighbour conflict, especially over something recurring like snow removal, anyone with an existing but vague shared driveway arrangement should consider formalizing a clear, written, registered agreement now, spelling out cost-sharing and a way to resolve future disagreements, rather than waiting for a dispute to force the issue.