Short answer. Yes. Where the land benefited by the easement is owned in common, use by any single co-owner keeps the right alive for everyone. The others do not lose the easement through non-use, because the prescription that would have extinguished it is interrupted for all of them by that one person's use.
What the law says
If the dominant estate belongs to several persons in common, the use of the easement by any one of them prevents prescription with respect to the others.
Civil Code, Article 633 — Use by One Co-Owner Preserves the Right. Read the full provision →
One person using the right is enough
Article 633 of the Civil Code is short and practical: If the dominant estate belongs to several persons in common, the use of the easement by any one of them prevents prescription with respect to the others. The dominant estate is the land that enjoys the easement — the lot with the right of way, the drainage outlet, the water channel. Where that land is co-owned, say by brothers and sisters who inherited it, the law does not count each co-owner's use separately. If one sibling has been driving through the passage all along, the years of non-use by the rest do not run against them.
Why the law treats the co-owners as one
An easement is a single burden attached to one piece of land in favour of another. It cannot sensibly exist for one co-owner and die for the next, because the servient owner would then have to keep the path open anyway while arguing about which neighbour may step on it. The right is indivisible in that sense, so the acts that preserve it are read collectively. The same logic explains the rule's practical value in family property: heirs who live abroad, or who simply never had occasion to pass through, keep the same right as the one who uses the passage every day.
What this article does not do
It does not create an easement. If no right of way or drainage right was ever acquired — by title, by agreement, or by the manner the law allows — there is nothing for one co-owner's use to preserve. It does not stop the easement from ending for other reasons, such as the two estates coming into one owner's hands, a valid renunciation, or the impossibility of using it. It also does not decide disputes among the co-owners themselves about how the passage is shared, nor does it let one of them widen the burden, move the route, or use it for a purpose the easement never covered.
Proving the use if the right is challenged
When a servient owner fences the passage and claims the easement was lost by disuse, the argument turns on evidence of actual use. Keep whatever shows it: the deed or annotation on the title, old survey plans, photographs, delivery and utility records, statements from neighbours, and dates. Bear in mind that the burden of showing the easement exists in the first place falls on the party invoking it, and that blocking an established easement is a matter that ordinarily has to be taken to court rather than settled by counter-fencing. Because the periods and the proof are technical, it is worth having your title documents reviewed before the passage is closed for long.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Republic of the Philippines vs. David Rey Guzman, etc., et al, G.R. No. 132964, February 18, 2000 — read the decision on LawPhil →