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“Thank you for taking the time to read and hopefully respond to my easement question. I have recently purchased 20 acres of land in Indiana that was considered landlocked and was given a proper easement to said land for ingress and egress and utilities. The problem we have run into after residing here for 1 year is there is no signage or notification of where our easement begins off of a private drive. We have continuous unwanted traffic as well as a very difficult time describing our location to incoming guests, deliveries etc…
So here is my question:
Am I allowed to put signage (my family name, private drive, no trespassing, etc…) at the beginning of our easement to recognize what the easements intent is and to deter unwanted traffic? The owner of the land has forbade us to place any signage on their property (our easement) at this time.”I’m not familiar with the laws of Indiana specifically, but in general I’m not aware of any rules regarding signage in particular. In general, the law considers that every easement comes along with all the things that are necessary in order to accomplish the main goal of the easement: for example, you have an easement for utilities. It probably doesn’t specifically say that you can dig a trench to put the utility line in, but that’s assumed.
Question: You could try to make an argument that a sign is necessary in order to properly use the easement for ingress and egress. My guess is that wouldn’t be a very strong argument-and more importantly, your neighbor would be more likely to knock your sign down than to sue you. This is a situaiton where I’d advise trying to be diplomatic and convincing. Perhaps the spectre of possible liability from trespassers would convince him that a sign is appropriate?
