A structural encroachment is a concept in American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 real property law, in which a piece of real property

Real property

In English Common Law, real property, real estate, realty, or immovable property is any subset of land that has been legally defined and the improvements to it made by human efforts: any buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, roads, various property rights, and so forth...

 hangs from one property over the property line of another landowner's premises

Premises

Premises are land and buildings together considered as a property. This usage arose from property owners finding the word in their title deeds, where it originally correctly meant "the aforementioned; what this document is about", from Latin prae-missus = "placed before".In this sense, the word is...

. The actual structure that encroaches might be a tree, bush, bay window

Bay window

A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room, either square or polygonal in plan. The angles most commonly used on the inside corners of the bay are 90, 135 and 150 degrees. Bay windows are often associated with Victorian architecture...

, stairway, steps, stoop

Urban stoop

In urban architecture, a stoop is a small staircase ending in a platform and leading to the entrance of an apartment building or other building.-Etymology:...

, garage, leaning fence, part of a building, or other fixture. Some attorneys classify it as a type of easement

Easement

An easement is a certain right to use the real property of another without possessing it.Easements are helpful for providing pathways across two or more pieces of property or allowing an individual to fish in a privately owned pond...

, related to an easement in gross, while some scholars classify such as one type of encroachment

Encroachment

Encroachment is a term which implies "advance beyond proper limits," and may have different interpretations depending on the context. Encroachment may refer to one of the following:* Temporal encroachment* Structural encroachment...

.

Creation of an encroachment

When a structural encroachment is created intentionally, it is basically an Easement in gross, and may be done by a permit to a government authority. A zoning law may also restrict an intentional structural encroachment.

A structural encroachment may also be created by necessity, by accident, or by prescription.

In popular culture and other uses

• In the movie Stuart Saves His Family
  Stuart Saves His Family
  Stuart Saves His Family is a 1995 comedy film directed by Harold Ramis, and based on a series of Saturday Night Live sketches from the early-to-mid 1990s. The movie tracks the adventures of would-be self-help guru Stuart Smalley, a creation of comedian Al Franken, as he attempts to save both his...
  
  , the Smalley family must pay for a structural encroachment of the late aunt
  Aunt
  An aunt is a person who is the sister or sister-in-law of a parent. A man with an equivalent relationship is an uncle, and the reciprocal relationship is that of a nephew or niece....
  
  's house over a neighbor's property, which results in an action to quiet title
  Quiet title
  An action to quiet title is a lawsuit brought in a court having jurisdiction over land disputes, in order to establish a party's title to real property against anyone and everyone, and thus "quiet" any challenges or claims to the title....
  
  . The other members of his family attempt to get him to commit perjury
  Perjury
  Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
  
  , which he refuses, so the family must pay for the easement
  Easement
  An easement is a certain right to use the real property of another without possessing it.Easements are helpful for providing pathways across two or more pieces of property or allowing an individual to fish in a privately owned pond...
  
   over the other real estate
  Real estate
  In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
  
  .

• In some medical
  Medicine
  Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
  
   contexts, a lump protruding into a blood vessel
  Blood vessel
  The blood vessels are the part of the circulatory system that transports blood throughout the body. There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and...
  
  is described as a structural encroachment.

• In some ecological contexts, the process of a peatmoss overgrowing, or bogging down a vascular plant is described as a structural encroachment.