Wolff ends this hodgepodge of a book with the notion of servitus. Wolff’s definition of servitus might at first seem rather difficult to comprehend - servitus is a right one has to a thing of another person. The idea becomes clearer when we move from this abstract level to more concrete examples. One particular instance of servitus is such where a person is allowed to walk or ride through another person’s estate to their own. Other types of servitus might involve a right to hunt in neighbour’s land, right to collect nuts or berries from it or a right to draw water from a well in it.
All the examples just given involve estates in a more rural area, but there are forms of servitus that are appropriate to more urban living areas. Thus, in one type of servitus a building may use the wall of another building as a supporting structure. Furthermore, the examples have all been affirmative in the sense that they allow a person to do something to the thing of another. Another type of servitus is negative in the sense that it involves a right to prevent an owner from doing something. For instance, an owner of an estate might be prevented from building a too tall building that would obstruct the view of the neighbour.
Majority of servitus are, Wolff insists, based on the free choice of the owners of the things in question. Yet, he admits, some of them might be obligated by the natural law. For instance, an owner of a building should take care that neighbouring buildings still receive enough light for normal proceedings of life. Thus, a building owner might be obligated into a servitus, where their neighbour is able to demand the placement of windows on their building, so that light can come through to the neighbouring estate.
All the examples of servitus presented thus far have been what Wolff calls a real servitus, that is, they involve relations between two estates. This type of servitus remains valid, even if the owner of the estate changes. A completely different is the case with what Wolff calls personal servitus, which is tied to a certain person and is cancelled e.g. if the person in question dies. A good example of this type of servitus is usufruct, in which a person is allowed to use a thing belonging to another person and even gather profits from it, as long as the thing in question remains substantially same.
