Fence glossary · Code & Permits
Easement
A recorded right allowing someone other than the owner to use a defined strip of a property — typically a utility company, a municipality, or a neighbor with a shared driveway. The land stays yours, but what you may build within the easement is limited by the terms of the grant.
Easements are the reason a fence line that looks obviously correct on the ground turns out to be the wrong line. Sanitary sewer, storm drainage, gas and electric easements commonly run along rear and side lot lines, which is exactly where a fence wants to go. Most utility easements do not forbid a fence outright. They reserve the right to remove one and not put it back if the facility owner ever needs access, and that is a live risk in the older Delaware County townships where lines are shallow and get dug up.
An easement appears on the recorded subdivision plan and on a property survey. It does not appear on a tax parcel map or a satellite image, which is where most homeowners look first. If you do not have a survey, the township, the title company or the recorder of deeds can usually produce the plan. Read the width as well as the language: a drainage easement measured fifteen feet in from the rear line puts a fence built on the line inside it for the entire run.
The practical answer is usually placement. Where the easement is narrow, the fence moves inside your own line by enough to clear it, which costs a little yard and removes the problem. Where the easement covers the only usable line, the fence gets built so sections can be lifted out and reset at the access point rather than cut out. Either way it is a decision made before material is ordered, not after the holes are dug.
