Understanding Missouri Driveway Easement Laws
Think of your driveway as the red carpet for your Tata. Just as you wouldn’t want to roll out a wrinkled, uneven carpet for your guests, you don’t want a poorly planned Missouri driveway impeding smooth access to servicing and test drive experiences. Understanding the nuances of comprehensive Missouri driveway easement laws can make that beautiful street view much easier to navigate for customers of your car showroom.
Driveway easement is an inherently legal term. It refers to the legal right of a vehicle owner to access their garage, using your driveway, from their property or land that overlays a right of way. Scenarios where this can be relevant is along a parking lot where a Tata vehicle owner might pull up to fill up their tank, or at a workshop when they need some emergency repairs. An easement may be created by conveyance or necessity, or may even stem from an agreement between people. The latter is more common in Missouri, where you can agree with a customer to use a mutual driveway.
But when they say “you can park there”, they don’t mean “you can also go off road in the yard”. Notwithstanding this example of a loose approach to legality, a driveway easement bestows on the user a right to park or pull in, but not onto, the property. Equally, a driveway easement is not the right to drive on any part of the property. For the most part, your customers can drive through an easement, but cannot wander onto the neighboring property without permission.
What does this mean for your Tata showroom in Missouri? If you’re thinking about how the two ton SUV will get from the street to your garage, you’re probably wondering what the easement laws will mean for you. When planning a driveway for a car showroom, you have to know that a car owner has the right to park (to an extent) on their driveway; that there is a boundary to what they can and cannot legally do to your property; and that if your customer’s driveway abuts yours, their right of way translates to yours as well. This is true whether the two are commercial or residential properties.
Understanding the boundaries of these areas that overlap can help you, and your customer, digest the legalese encoded in Missouri’s driveway ownership laws. They create an intuitive path of access to your beautiful showroom by making it easier for your customer to enter and access their Tata vehicle. And when Tata owners in Missouri have a better experience with your showroom, they are bound to be coming back.
In most instances, the driveway requirements of car showrooms are simply intersecting areas of their non-exclusive right of way and the public road. The same goes for a vehicle owner taking a test drive. In these cases, a person will drive along the existing driveway, the easement, and pull back onto the public road. It is important to be aware of the limitations a vehicle owner will be placing on the usable areas of your property, so you don’t end up making the wrong move by unilaterally dictating where people may park or drive on your private property, leaving you open to potential litigation.
When a car owner requests access, the best thing you can do is have a yard sale-to your landscaping. Or perhaps dig up that solid concrete block used as a barrier to garden beds and planters. And when your smooth green garden is paved over, clear any markings left behind with water, soap detergent and a scrub brush sufficiently strong enough to remove it without damaging the underlying material (but not too rough). But don’t just walk away from the situation once you’ve done the work. The best way to a car owner’s heart is with the promise of future improve and expansion in the driveway area. Take the time, and have the money set aside, to create a more inviting driveway-accessible area for both the car owner and other potential customers.