Section — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology
III. On Servitude
I. Notion. Servitude is a right consisting in this, that the owner of some estate,1 as its owner, has some favor over the estate of another. The favor is called active servitude; the burden inhering in the estate of another is passive servitude. The estate which is considered to have the favor is called the dominant estate; the estate in which the burden inheres, the servient estate.
1 Under the name of estate come corporeal immovable things, such as fields, pastures, houses, and so forth.
II. Division. Servitudes are distinguished:
Into continuous and discontinuous, according as they are exercised without human action or through it. Continuous servitudes are, for example, the right of a stream, of drip, and so forth; discontinuous servitudes are the right of a path, of drawing water, and so forth.
Into visible and invisible, according as it appears by an external sign, for example a door or window, or does not appear. Invisible servitudes are, for example, a servitude of not building on an estate, or of not raising some building higher.
III. How acquisition and cessation have place you should deduce from the laws of the country; the rights and burdens annexed to servitude you should draw from the title by which it is constituted and from the law.