Gorge Journal · Land Diligence
Who pays to fix a shared gravel road in Kentucky when there is no agreement?
Everyone the road benefits, jointly — if the passway is 20 feet wide or less. Kentucky’s default road maintenance rule has a width limit written into it.
Buyers looking at Gorge land almost always ask the county-road question first, and that is the right first question. The second question — what happens on the stretch the county never took in, when there is no recorded road maintenance agreement — has an answer in Kentucky statute that is older than the cabins on it and narrower than most people assume.
KRS 381.640 is titled “Joint owners of private passway to share costs.” Subsection (1) sets the scope: where two or more persons “have acquired real estate, not exceeding twenty (20) feet in width, sufficient for a passway to benefit their lands,” the benefited owners “shall pay all the costs expended for the passway or the opening of and fixing the passway for travel.” Subsection (2) carries it forward: those owners “shall bear jointly all the necessary expense of repairs, reconstruction and maintenance, including the necessary fencing thereof, and shall cause the necessary work to be done.”
Why does the 20-foot width matter?
Because it is the statute’s own boundary, and nothing in KRS 381.640 extends the cost-sharing default to a wider strip. A 20-foot easement is a common width in older Kentucky deeds. A 30-foot or 50-foot right of way — the kind a subdivision plat or a modern surveyor is more likely to lay out — sits outside the words the General Assembly used. If your access runs on a wider strip, you are back on whatever your deeds, plats and recorded agreements actually say.
The second detail worth reading twice is “including the necessary fencing thereof.” The 1942 legislature put fencing inside the shared expense. On hill ground where a passway is cut along a bank and fenced off from pasture, that is not a trivial line item.
| Kentucky’s private passway default | What the statute says |
|---|---|
| Who it applies to | Two or more owners who acquired a passway strip benefiting their lands |
| Width limit | Not exceeding 20 feet |
| Opening and fixing for travel | Paid by the benefited owners |
| Ongoing cost | Repairs, reconstruction and maintenance, borne jointly |
| Included by name | The necessary fencing of the passway |
| Duty to act | Owners “shall cause the necessary work to be done” |
| If someone will not pay | Enforced in a court of equity; the benefited land takes a lien |
| Last effective | October 1, 1942 — unchanged since the recodification |
The statute does not send a bill. It gives the neighbours who did pay a lien on the land of the one who did not.
What happens if a co-owner refuses to pay their share?
KRS 381.650 is the enforcement half, and it is short enough to quote in full in substance: collection of the indebtedness imposed by KRS 381.640 “may be enforced by a proceeding in a court of equity; and the lands benefited by those who own such passways will be subjected to a lien for the due portion of such expense that may be necessarily incurred. Enough of the property of any delinquent owner may be sold by a proceeding in equity to pay his portion of such assessment.”
Read that as a buyer rather than as a litigant. It means two things at once. A neighbour who has been carrying the gravel bill alone has a statutory route to a lien against your parcel — which is a title question, not just a neighbourly one. And it means the remedy is a lawsuit in equity, with a lawyer and a filing fee, which is why almost nobody uses it for a $900 load of rock. The statute is a backstop, not a billing system.
What does a good recorded road maintenance agreement say?
After enough closings on roads like these, the agreements that hold up share the same bones, and the ones that cause arguments are missing the same lines. In my experience the useful ones name eight things:
- Every benefited parcel, identified by deed book and page, not by owner name — owners change, parcels do not.
- The road itself, described by width and centerline, so the “20 feet or less” question is answered on paper.
- Where maintenance stops and improvement starts — grading and gravel are not the same decision as a new culvert or a paved apron.
- How cost is split: equally, by parcel count, by road frontage, or by distance travelled. Pick one and write it down.
- How a decision gets made, including what a majority is when one owner holds three lots.
- Who may sign a contract on the group’s behalf, and up to what amount.
- Notice and a cure period before anyone reaches for KRS 381.650.
- That it binds successors and assigns, and that it is recorded.
That last point is the one that does the work. Under KRS 382.110(1), instruments required by law to be recorded to be effectual against purchasers without notice, or creditors, are recorded in the county clerk’s office of the county where the property, or the greater part of it, is located. An unrecorded handshake among four cabin owners is a promise between those four people. A recorded agreement is a promise the next buyer inherits — and the reason the next buyer’s lawyer can price the road before closing instead of discovering it afterwards.
How this fits the rest of the access question
Sequence it. First establish whether the road is in the county system at all — that is a different statute and a different office, and it is covered in gated drives and private roads: who maintains what. If the answer is no, pull the recorded instruments for every parcel on the road and look for an agreement. If there is no agreement, measure the strip, because the width decides whether KRS 381.640 is even in play. Our broader notes on access roads and easements in the Gorge run the same checklist against deeded easements and prescriptive claims.
None of this is legal advice and I am not your lawyer. It is the order to ask the questions in, so that the one unanswerable question — who pays when the road washes out in March — is answered in writing before you own a share of it.
Does KRS 381.640 apply to a 30-foot easement?
The statute’s words cover a passway “not exceeding twenty (20) feet in width.” Nothing in KRS 381.640 extends the default beyond that, so on a wider strip your deeds, plat and any recorded agreement govern. Measure the strip in the recorded description, not in the field.
Can a neighbour really put a lien on my land over road gravel?
KRS 381.650 provides that the benefited lands “will be subjected to a lien for the due portion of such expense,” enforceable by a proceeding in a court of equity, and that enough of a delinquent owner’s property may be sold in equity to pay their share. It takes a lawsuit, not an invoice — but the route exists.
Is a road maintenance agreement required to buy Gorge land?
No statute requires one. Individual lenders and title underwriters set their own conditions on private-access property, so ask yours early. I am your agent, not your lender — but the absence of an agreement is something you want priced into the deal rather than discovered after it.
Last updated October 24, 2026.
By Marcos Gil, REALTOR® — Keller Williams Commonwealth · KY Real Estate License No. 296259 · Call or text (859) 310-1209.
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