SERVITUDE (Lat. scrritudo, from serene, servant, slave). In the Roman law, a right to use property which belongs to another. Servi tudes are classified as `pnedial' and 'personal: The former are annexed to land: the right be longs to the owner of a 'dominant' piece of land, and is exercised over a neighboring `servient' piece of land. The 'medial servitudes are further subdivided into rustic and urban. The former include rights of way and rights of drawing water from o• over neighboring land. The urban servitudes are annexed to residential property: they include rights of support from an adjoining building, rights of discharging rainwater on ad joining premises, and restrictions upon the height of neighboring buildings. The priedial servitudes are of unlimited duration.
Personal servitudes are established in favor of a particular person, without reference to his ownership of land, and they may be exercised over immovable property o• over movables. They are rights of more o• less complete use and en joyment, regularly limited to a single life. The most important. personal servitude is a usufruct.
A very important restriction upon servitudes is that the owner of servient property need not do anything. His duty is confined to inaction o• toleration. The only exception is found in the urban servitude of support from an adjoining building. This servitude obliges the owner to keep his building in repair.
Servitudes may he established by emitract (ac cepted grant) o• by testament or by judicial de cree in a partition suit o• by prescription. They may be extinguished by contract (accepted re lease), and by confusion or merger, when the ownership of the servient property and the spe cial right conferred by the servitude are united in one person. Personal and rustic servitudes may be lost by non-user; urban servitudes are so lost only when the owner of the servient estates prescribes his liberty (see PRESCRIPTION), which means that he must maintain for 10 or 20 years a state of things inconsistent with the servitude.
In modern civil law it is possible to charge periodical payments upon land; but with this ex ception the modern European doctrine of servi tudes is substantially like the Roman.
General restrictions imposed by law upon use of property, especially when in the interest of neighbors, are sometimes called 'legal servitudes.' The term servitude was also applied to the status of transported laborers marked by temporary loss of liberty due to service obligations under con tract. Developed chiefly in English and French
seventeenth and eighteenth century colonies, negro, Indian, and white servitude was anal ogous to recent subject labor in Cuba, Soulli America, South Africa, and Hawaii. Po• two centuries (1619-1819) in America servitude was an important social institution, serving the econ omic functions of immigration and a skilled labor supply. Its longest institutional duration was in agricultural Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Vir ginia, where it supplied high-grade labor a cen tury after slavery replaced it as a general labor supply. Indented or indentured servitude started as a free personal relation based on voluntary contract for a term of service in lieu of trans portation and maintenance or profit-sharing be tween poor British or Continental immigrants and individuals or corporations, like the Virginia Company, importing them. It tended to pass into a property relation (I) in which S rec ognized only the involuntary and sometimes in definite service obligation enjoined by law in England o• the colonies, or procured by force through the kidnapping of persons in Great Brit ain, called 'spiriting': and (2) in which exten sive control ,was asserted over the bodies and lib erties of the person during service. The mas ter's right to service of both voluntary and in voluntary servants was supposed to be based upon contrac•t,written or oral, in the form of court sen tences, act of Assembly, o• 'according to the cnstom of the country.' The status servitude was recognized by statute, as follows: Vir ginia, 1619; Massachusetts, 1630-36; Maryland, 1637; Connecticut, 1643; Rhode Island, 1647; North Ca rolina, 1665; Pennsylvania, 162r Georgia, 1732. Important incidents added by law were: Master's alienation, by gift, sale, or will; rating in assets; seizure for debt; two to seven year additions to time of service, whip ping, and fetters for control; consent to mar riage, property ownership, trade, and assembly; servant's rights to freedom dues, certificate of freedom, suit and complaint by petition, com imitation Tor punishment, free time, medical at tention, and, if white, non-service to colored per sons and infidels. Servants ('kids,' 'redemption crs,"indented') included younger sons of no bility; political prisoners; religious malcon tents; vagrants; convicts; German, Swiss, French, and Dutch peasants; negrocs and In dians. Servitude declined as shivery developed; but a white-servant trade lasted until 1819. Con sult authorities cited under CIVIL LAW.