Redemptive Easements

One of the new institutes included in the new Civil Code is the so-called redemption of certain easements. It is an example for an old, in our legal culture already known and now reanimated institute, which was not regulated in the legal system for 65 years. Redemption means, that the easement can be cancelled by the property’s owner disbursing a certain amount of money to the obligee.

 The redemption has influence on

-       servitudes, encumbering on a forest plot (§ 1261)

-       all temporally unlimited land charges (§ 1304)

 In these cases, the redemption of easements has to be fixed in their constituting contracts. If not, the contract is void and the easement cannot arise.

 The question is, what hast to be fixed in the contract. According to jurisprudential literature not only the amount, but also the conditions of redemption must have been determined already before the establishment of the servitude.