Right of way (recht van overpad): who may do what, and who pays for the path?

The law does not talk about neighbours but about plots. The servient tenement (dienend erf) is the land the path runs over; its owner has to tolerate it. The dominant tenement (heersend erf) is the plot that reaches the road via that path; its owner may use it. The right is attached to the land, not to the people: sell the house and you sell the right, or the burden, with it.

A right of way is not a separate kind of right. It is the best-known form of an easement (erfdienstbaarheid), the collective term in article 5:70 for any burden placed on one plot for the benefit of another. A right to run a pipe through the neighbours' land or to keep a window looking onto their garden is also an easement; nobody walks over those. For the rules the name makes no difference: everything below is in Book 5, title 6, and applies to a drain just as much as to a path.

What it is not: an arrangement. If the neighbours have been coming through the back for years because you allow it, that is tolerance. Tolerance can be ended and does not pass on sale, even after twenty years. The difference from a real right of way lies in the deed or in prescription, which is exactly what the next step is about.

A right of way is never on a sign in the garden. It is in a deed, and sometimes in a deed from long ago. This is how you look it up, in the order that costs the least.

1. Read your own title deed. Under the heading erfdienstbaarheden (easements) it says whether your plot may use a path over the neighbours' land, or has to tolerate one. Often there is only a reference to an older deed, with a part and number.
2. Read the neighbours' deed. The right may be recorded only in theirs. If you cannot see it, request a copy from the Land Registry; that costs 19.85 euros by e-mail (Kadaster rate, consulted 11 September 2026).
3. If neither deed says anything, order an easement search (erfdienstbaarhedenonderzoek). The Land Registry then goes through all registered deeds of the plot. A limited search back to 1950 costs 190 euros per plot, a full search 350 euros. You order it for the servient tenement, so for the land the path runs over, and you get back the deed numbers in which an easement was found.
4. If that turns up nothing either, two routes remain: prescription, if the path has been used as of right for ten or twenty years, and the emergency access route (noodweg) of article 5:57 if your plot cannot properly reach the public road without it. Both are further down this page.

This overview is on no other page. Per situation you see what the landowner may do, what the user of the path may do, who pays and which article says so. Everything was checked against the current text of Book 5 of the Dutch Civil Code on 11 September 2026. If your deed says something different, the deed prevails: almost every article below expressly allows that.

Dutch Civil Code Book 5, title 6 (articles 70 to 84) and article 57, text in force on 1 January 2026, checked on 11 September 2026. Where the deed may deviate, the deed prevails.

The first question in almost every dispute is not whether the neighbours may use the path, but how. Article 5:73(1) gives the order: first the deed, and if that is silent, local custom. If it says 'on foot and by bicycle', a car is not included, even if the path is wide enough. If it only says 'right of way' and nothing more, you look at what is usual in that area and at how the path has been used for years.

That last rule matters more than it seems. If an easement has been exercised in good faith for a considerable time in a particular way without objection, then in case of doubt that way is decisive. If the neighbours have been driving over the path for fifteen years and nobody ever objected, the landowner has a problem if they suddenly want to forbid it now. The reverse also holds: whoever always went on foot cannot simply start driving. That is an aggravation and it is not allowed without a new deed.

The law says nothing about width. There is no minimum of one metre or one and a half. The width is the measure in the deed, and if the deed gives none, the width the path actually had all that time. A driveway that was always three metres wide may not be narrowed to one metre by the landowner with a border or a row of tiles. Someone who loses a few centimetres to a new fence, on the other hand, rarely has a case, because access remains.

All these questions are measured against article 5:74: use must be in the way that burdens the landowner least. That works both ways. The user does not drive faster than necessary and not at night with the radio on, and the landowner does not fill the path with obstacles because they would rather be rid of the use.

A gate is allowed. That is the rule most often contested and most often confirmed. The landowner may close off their plot, including where the path begins, as long as the neighbours can get through. In practice that means a key, a code or a gate that opens from both sides. A gate with a lock to which only the landowner has the key is not a gate but an obstruction, and that is exactly what the court cases are about.

Of the 81 rulings from 2025 and 2026 we read, 12 were summary proceedings (kort geding). That is the urgent procedure in which someone wants access now, or wants a fence gone now. The judge then only looks at whether passage has genuinely been made impossible. On 20 May 2026 the District Court of Midden-Nederland refused an injunction against a fence on the boundary, because passage remained and there was no abuse of right and no need for an emergency access route (ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:2749). The fence stayed; whoever tried to stop it paid the costs.

The reverse applies too: the path is for coming and going, not for standing. Whoever has a right of way may not park on it, store a trailer, leave a container or lean bicycles against the neighbours' fence. That follows from article 5:73(1): the content of the right is what the deed says, and a deed that grants passage does not grant storage. The landowner may simply act against it.

If you want to put a gate on a path with a right of way, do three things. Give the neighbours a key or the code in advance, put that in writing with a date, and choose a gate that opens from the inside without a key. Then there is nothing left to litigate about. A fence on the boundary itself falls under the same rules as any other boundary fence; those are in our guide on fences.

This is the question none of the pages in the search results answers firmly, while article 5:75 is literally about it. The main rule: the user of the path pays. Paragraph 1 says the owner of the dominant tenement may, at their own expense, do everything on the servient tenement that is needed for the use. Paragraph 2 says they may, at their own expense, install paving, lighting or a small fence if that is needed. And paragraph 3 says they must also maintain what they installed, insofar as that is needed in the landowner's interest.

So what the landowner does not have to do: pave the path for the neighbours, deal with the puddles or replace the lamp. They must tolerate the neighbours doing it, and they may not start using the tiles the neighbours laid as if it were their own terrace (paragraph 4). If the user ever removes their paving, they must restore the land to its old state.

Two exceptions. The deed may deviate from all of this (paragraph 5), and that often happens: many deeds in new-build estates say that the costs of a shared back path are borne equally by all adjoining owners. So read the deed before sending the neighbours a bill. And if the path runs over a strip in co-ownership (mandeligheid), land that belongs to you jointly, the rules of co-ownership apply instead of paragraphs 3 and 4 (paragraph 6), and each pays according to their share.

Once the answer is clear, the job follows. Re-paving a back path, fitting a gate with a cylinder lock or installing a lamp with a dusk sensor is a day's work for a gardener or paver. At the bottom of this page you post that job with the cost split you found above, and the price guide for garden work tells you roughly what such a path costs.

Do the neighbours have to pay because they walk over your land? Only if the deed says so. Article 5:70(2) calls that a retributie: a sum, one-off or periodic, that the user pays to the landowner. If it is not in the deed, the use is free and you cannot introduce it afterwards. When a new right is being created, it is something to negotiate over, certainly if the path lowers the value of your plot.

Buying out is the reverse movement: the landowner wants to be rid of the burden and offers the neighbours money to waive the right. There is no statutory amount and no table for that. It is a negotiation in which the user's interest sets the price: someone who can no longer reach their garage without the path does not waive it for a few hundred euros. The waiver itself goes through a notarial deed registered with the Land Registry, otherwise the right is still there in ten years' time.

The law has a third form few people know. If the user themselves wants to be rid of the right, for instance because the maintenance duty costs more than the path is worth to them, the landowner must cooperate (article 5:82). The user then pays for the deed. And if the landowner wants the right gone without the neighbours' cooperation, only the court remains: it can cancel the right if the user no longer has a reasonable interest in it (5:79), and that is not readily accepted.

Three situations people mix up, with three different answers. The first is the back alley on private land: a path running over the rear strip of every plot in the row, where each owner owns the piece behind their own garden and the others may cross it. Those are mutual easements, usually created in one go when the estate was built. Each owner is the servient tenement for their own strip and the dominant tenement for the rest. Whoever closes off their piece blocks the whole row and loses that case.

The second is the alley owned by the municipality. Then the strip is not part of the gardens but a separate plot in the municipality's name. No easement is needed, because you are not crossing the neighbours' land; you are crossing municipal land under a use arrangement, and the municipality decides on maintenance and whether a fence is allowed. Whether that applies to you is visible on the cadastral map: if the strip has its own plot number, check who the owner is.

The third is the public road. A path that has been open to everyone for a very long time may have become public under the Roads Act (Wegenwet). Then not only the neighbour may use it but everyone, and the owner cannot close it. That is a separate procedure with its own periods (thirty years factually public, or ten years with maintenance by a public body), and it is why judges in right-of-way cases often first establish whether the path is a private path at all. In the Midden-Nederland case of 20 May 2026 that was one of the three grounds rejected.

Article 5:72 says an easement can also arise through prescription, and almost a quarter of all court cases are about this. The periods are in Book 3: ten years for possession in good faith (article 3:99), and otherwise twenty years (article 3:105 together with 3:306). You are in good faith, for instance, if you bought a house with a deed that mentioned the path, while that deed later turned out to be wrong.

Where it breaks down in practice is the word possession. For prescription it is not enough to have used the path for twenty years; you must have behaved for twenty years as if you had a right to it, visibly to the owner. A path you used because the neighbours allowed it is tolerance, and tolerance never produces a right, however long it lasts. A path you paved yourself, lit, fitted with your own gate and where you confronted the neighbours when they blocked it: that starts to look like possession.

Then there is a trap for paths from before 1992. Under the old Civil Code a right of way could not arise through prescription, because it was not a continuous easement: you walk over it now and then, it does not work by itself like a gutter. The period therefore usually only starts running on 1 January 1992. On 28 January 2026 the District Court of Limburg accepted an exception for a path with a fixed layout (ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2026:369), but that is the exception and not the rule.

What the numbers say: of the 81 rulings from 2025 and 2026 we read, 20 were about prescription, and whoever claimed to have acquired a right of way through prescription lost more often than they won. The Amsterdam Court of Appeal refused it on 18 August 2026 for someone driving over the neighbours' plot to their garage (ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2026:2271), the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal on 11 August 2026 for driving to the public road (ECLI:NL:GHARL:2026:5242), and the Hague Court of Appeal on 5 August 2025 (ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2025:1601). It did succeed at the District Court of The Hague on 30 July 2025, where under the new law a right of way through a passage had arisen (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2025:14349), and at the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal on 16 September 2025 for a path at the rear (ECLI:NL:GHARL:2025:5688). The difference was always in the proof of possession, not in the years.

Prescription of the path works the same as prescription of a strip of land along the boundary; the guide on establishing the boundary explains how to interrupt the period and what the Supreme Court decided in the Heusden case about land you have lost.

On 11 September 2026 the case-law register of the Dutch judiciary counted 871 published civil rulings containing 'recht van overpad': 68 from 2025 and 41 from 2026 up to that date. The judiciary publishes only part of all judgments, so the real number is higher. Of the 81 summaries from those two years we read, this is how often each subject came up:

• Prescription: 20 cases, one in four. Whoever relies on it loses more often than they win.
• Interpretation of the deed: 17 cases. What does 'right of way' mean when the 1958 deed does not say whether a car is included.
• Summary proceedings: 12 cases. Someone wants the fence gone now or access now; the judge only looks at whether passage has genuinely been made impossible.
• Car, driving or parking: 10 cases. Fence, gate or obstruction: 8 cases. Almost always the side that can show passage remained, or did not, wins.
• Changing or cancelling: 5 cases, emergency access route 3, maintenance or paving 3. Cancellation is rarely granted.
• 21 of the 81 were appeals or cassation. Whoever starts this often keeps going, and pays the other side's costs on losing.

These are not the judiciary's summaries but our own account of what was at stake and how it ended. The ECLI number is the reference; look it up and you can read the full ruling.

• Amsterdam Court of Appeal, 18 August 2026, ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2026:2271. A resident had for years driven partly over the neighbours' plot to reach his garden and garage and believed he had acquired a right to do so through prescription. The court saw use, not possession, and no neighbourhood road either. The neighbours could end the passage; the resident paid the costs at two instances.
• Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal, 11 August 2026, ECLI:NL:GHARL:2026:5242. Same question, different neighbourhood: by car over the neighbours' plot to the public road. District court and court of appeal both said no. The lesson: a car over the path is a heavy easement, and you do not get it for free by driving long enough.
• District Court of The Hague, 30 July 2025, ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2025:14349. Here it did succeed. Under the old law the passage through an alley could not be acquired by prescription, but under the new law the period had been completed since 1992. The court declared the right and ordered the neighbour to cooperate with registration at the Land Registry.
• District Court of Midden-Nederland, 20 May 2026, ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:2749. Summary proceedings over a fence on the boundary. The buyers of the adjoining house wanted an injunction; the judge refused it because there was no abuse of right, the path was not a public road and no emergency access route was needed. The fence stayed.
• District Court of Zeeland-West-Brabant, 3 September 2025, ECLI:NL:RBZWB:2025:5982. The landowner wanted the right of way cancelled under article 5:79 because, in his view, the neighbours no longer needed it. The court found there was still a reasonable interest and refused. Cancellation is the exception; the law protects the existing right.
• Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal, 18 November 2025, ECLI:NL:GHARL:2025:7234. A user of the path had laid a new layer of asphalt on it. The landowner demanded its removal. The court said no: whoever holds the right may keep the path in order, and a new layer does not have to go. That is article 5:75 in practice.

Moving is the least drastic and it is in article 5:73(2). The landowner may move the path to another strip of their plot, for instance from the middle of the garden to the edge, as long as the user loses nothing by it. The costs of that move, so the new paving, are for the landowner. They do not need to ask the neighbours, but they must be able to show that the new route is just as good.

Changing or cancelling can only be done by the court, and the bar is high. Article 5:78 gives the landowner two grounds: unforeseen circumstances that make it unreasonable to keep the right unchanged, or, if the right has existed for twenty years, conflict with the public interest. Article 5:79 adds the situation that use has become impossible or that the user no longer has a reasonable interest. The fact that the neighbours can nowadays also come in through the front does not immediately remove that interest; the District Court of Zeeland-West-Brabant refused on exactly that ground on 3 September 2025. Conversely, the user may ask for a change under article 5:80 if their path has become unusable through circumstances.

On sale nothing changes. The right is a real right: it is attached to the land and passes to the buyer, on both sides. A buyer of the dominant tenement gets the path with it, a buyer of the servient tenement gets the burden with it, even if the seller said nothing about it. If one of the two plots is divided, the right continues for each part that still benefits from it (article 5:76). And if you buy a house that comes with a verbal arrangement about a back entrance, you do not buy that arrangement: it was tolerance and it ends at the transfer.

If you rent the house, you use the path through your landlord. The right belongs to the owner, but the tenant may use it as part of the rented property. If the neighbours block the path, that is a defect you report to the landlord; they are the one who can address the neighbours, because the right is in their name.

Of the 81 cases we read, 21 were on appeal or in cassation. Those are conflicts of years, with costs far above the value of the path. This order keeps most disputes out of court.

1. Read the deed, yours and the neighbours'. Nine out of ten arguments are about what exactly was agreed, and that is usually simply written there. Request a copy from the Land Registry if needed.
2. If in doubt, order an easement search. It costs 190 to 350 euros and it ends the question of whether there is a right, so the conversation is only about how.
3. Put what you agree with the neighbours in writing: the width, who has the key, who maintains the paving, who pays what. Dated and signed by both. If you want it to bind the next owners too, have a notary put it in a deed.
4. If you cannot work it out together, call neighbourhood mediation (buurtbemiddeling). In most municipalities it is free, and a mediator often achieves in one conversation what three angry letters did not.
5. Check your legal expenses insurance. Neighbour law falls under the housing cover of most policies, and the insurer then first sends its own lawyer who reads the deed and writes to the neighbours.
6. Only then the court. If passage is genuinely blocked, that can go to summary proceedings. If it is about prescription, interpretation of the deed or cancellation, it is full proceedings lasting months. In both cases take the table on this page with you, because the judge starts at the same article you do.