New neighbors and fences

September 4, 2021 12:15 PM

We've lived at our current residence for two years. A few months after we moved in, we put up a 6 foot fence because we had to rescue my Mom's German Shepherd. We put it conservatively within our property line. The property that faces the longest length of said fence has new owners, who this past week put up a fence that they butted up against ours. We're pretty sure their fence is now on our property. We'd appreciate perspectives on how best to negotiate this.

The house behind us has changed owners. The new occupants have bought the house and moved in three families covering two generations. This is their first experience in owning a home. We've owned a few different homes (as our careers have moved us around) and this is our second in this city.

When we had to rescue my Mom's German Shepherd in the Summer of 2019, we built a six foot privacy fence for our backyard. After looking at the city GIS, we conservatively placed our fence a few feet within what we guesstimated to be our property line. The previous occupants of the house behind us had little dachshunds that they carried out to the backyard for bathroom breaks and then carried back inside. Our GSD had free rein to romp around the backyard. He also gets lots and lots of walks.

The new folks started a fence on the first day of moving in and hurriedly asked my wife if it would be a problem to butt their fence up against ours. They said they wouldn't attach it to ours, but just run it to the edge. She said "Ok."

Then they left two large dogs out in the yard 24 hours a day. As you can imagine, that doesn't work great with a GSD. He goes to 'his' fence and sniffs, and the two neighbor dogs charge the fence growling. So, our GSD has pretty constant diarrhea now.

Due mostly to that, we looked at the city GIS again and saw that our property not only extends about 10 feet beyond our fence, but that it seems to split right through our neighbor's driveway. I looked up the actual deed map which shows the original subdivision plan with our lot and the GIS matches it exactly.

So, we have a few questions. We are thinking of hiring a surveyor to set correct boundary lines to have a neutral party say what they are. We don't want to aggravate our new neighbors, who are probably acting partly out of inexperience (of home ownership). We'd love for them to finish their fence within the correct boundaries to create more buffer between the dogs. They basically just kinda cheaped/wimped out on installing about four panels, which they left lying against a tree.

What is the AskMe community's experience with negotiating fence lines with neighbors? If we let them leave their fence where it is, and look for other ways to deal with our dog, do we have any legal liabilities for letting them essentially squat on our property (if we are correct about the line)?

posted by Tchozz to Law & Government (14 answers total)

Better to address it before your neighbours spend a lot of time and money finishing the fence, I'd say.
posted by pipeski at 12:45 PM on September 4, 2021 [29 favorites]

Go talk to them now. Do not mention that you think your property runs through their driveway. That will just freak them out and I have a feeling that a) you are not planning to take their driveway and b) you would not be allowed to do so. Tell them that you need to have a better fence because of their heavy dog usage and you had a kind of agreement with the prior owner and now that everyone has dogs, you need to do a proper fence. Get a boundary survey and in the meantime, line up a fence contractor to put in a proper fence on the boundary. Have them pay for half of the length of fence that borders both your properties.

My neighbors put up a proper fence and this does not stop their dog from barking all day long and hurling himself at the fence anytime we are outside. So, temper your expectations there.
posted by amanda at 1:00 PM on September 4, 2021 [5 favorites]

A friend of mine recently put a fence in her back yard, and she was advised that if it wasn't up against the property line, she may end up legally "ceding" the portion of her property beyond it to the neighbors on the other side in some way. You might want to contact a real estate lawyer about whether something like that applies in your case — and they could probably help with a lot of other questions you have about this, too.
posted by whatnotever at 1:03 PM on September 4, 2021 [19 favorites]

A friend of mine recently put a fence in her back yard, and she was advised that if it wasn't up against the property line, she may end up legally "ceding" the portion of her property beyond it to the neighbors on the other side in some way. You might want to contact a real estate lawyer about whether something like that applies in your case

The technical term is "adverse possession"
posted by LionIndex at 1:08 PM on September 4, 2021 [7 favorites]

I am not a lawyer, this is just my perspective in terms of having good relations with neighbors:

The new folks started a fence on the first day of moving in and hurriedly asked my wife if it would be a problem to butt their fence up against ours. They said they wouldn't attach it to ours, but just run it to the edge. She said "Ok."

So is this what they then did? If so, then I think you ought to offer to pay the cost of changing their fence.

But if this " We'd love for them to finish their fence within the correct boundaries to create more buffer between the dogs. They basically just kinda cheaped/wimped out on installing about four panels, which they left lying against a tree" means they are using your fence as one side, then I'd let them know you double checked, and actually this is where the line is, so could they please install the remaining part of the fence to reflect the actual property lines. I wouldn't bother with a getting a third party involved unless it leads to conflict.
posted by coffeecat at 1:23 PM on September 4, 2021 [6 favorites]

Lawyer. IANYL and TINLA. Have the lawyer write to the neighbors about how you're confused about the boundary lines and you're getting a survey to settle everybody's rights. Make sure the letter is polite. Just mention the recent fence erections. Advise them in the lawyer's letter, and in person, nicely, that they probably should stop work on their fence until the survey is done.

It's not clear to me from the above whether someone may have acquired some rights in the driveway area by adverse possession. It's a matter of the length of time of occupancy of the area, and your state laws.

Don't bother claiming "a kind of agreement with the prior owner" because it's obvious there's no evidence of such an agreement, much less a written agreement.
posted by JimN2TAW at 2:12 PM on September 4, 2021 [5 favorites]

It'd be a good gesture to offer reimbursement for the materials for the initial fence, according to their receipts, since they relied in good faith on your wife's word.

Then, going forward, insist firmly that their fence following all regulations and survey lines.
posted by dum spiro spero at 2:13 PM on September 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

Just to clarify, when you say their fence “butts up” against your fence, you mean that they’ve run a section of fence perpendicular to the section that separates your yards? If I’m understanding this correctly, that means you could build a “buffer” fence without tearing down any of their fence. If this is the case, you’d be reasonable to do so yourself, but it might be a big ask for your neighbors to do the building.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:32 PM on September 4, 2021

IANAL. Current and former neighbors have obviously(openly and notoriously) used that driveway and may have acquired rights. Decide what you want to do about the driveway; you could offer it as a salve to the expense of moving the fence, but it's time to formalize the situation. Ambiguity in property lines can cause trouble, look, it already has. Get a survey and a lawyer. Meet with neighbors; try to find a fair solution that doesn't give up property but acknowledges that your wife gave consent to the fence.
posted by theora55 at 2:54 PM on September 4, 2021

Adverse possession is the principle that would apply, but for a new fence built on your side of the line, the period of time is long in every state (15 years in mine), and it can be simply prevented by an explicit grant of permission such as the letter kschang suggests.

I have heard "Chad" as the male equivalent of a Karen.
posted by yclipse at 3:11 PM on September 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

> The technical term is "adverse possession"

Yes, fence lines have a way of becoming actual property lines over time via legal principles such as adverse possession, also known colloquially as "squatters rights". See a U.S.-specific discussion here. Assuming the property is in North Carolina, you are better off than some as it looks like the time requirement for adverse possession there is more than 15 years.

So, this is a thing you need to get figured out and figured out right.

FWIW for the adverse possessor to actually take possession of the property, the possession must be actually "adverse" - i.e., hostile, without permission of the owner - and continuous.

So for example if you were to send a letter to the neighbor once a year with an explanation of the situation and a reminder that you still own that property but are allowing them to use it temporarily, that would reset the clock on the "adverse" portion of the possession and also the length of time it is needed. So if you did that every year, sending say by certified mail requiring a signature, and then keeping very good records of all of this, then that would be one way of doing it.

Another way would be to rent them the various areas of your property for say $1/year. Again keeping excellent records of the rental agreement, annual payment, etc.

I am not actually recommending anything like that as the best solution for this - that is clearly getting the fence & any other situations fixed the right way - but let's say this drags on for another year or so without a proper resolution. Then I would start implementing one of these other solutions just as a stop-gap.
posted by flug at 4:30 PM on September 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

> It's not clear to me from the above whether someone may have acquired some rights in the driveway area by adverse possession.

Rights to a property via adverse possession don't just sort of float over to the new owner automatically. The person who wants to grab some property via adverse possession must file a suit and then prove all points of adverse possession (actual, open & notorious, hostile, continuous, exclusive) to the satisfaction of a judge. This is not easy to do. And owner should be given an opportunity to defend against the adverse possession. And then IF it were granted the current county property records would reflect that.

(FWIW the McCloskeys, the infamous gun-waving lawyer couple from St Louis in the news recently, won an adverse possession case or two. But you pretty much have to be an asshole lawyer like they are - or be able to hire a bunch of them - to do it successfully.)

The driveway portion of this issue is, however, somewhat more concerning in that the adverse usage has been going on for quite some time, apparently. The neighbors clearly do not yet have any adverse possession claim to the area they have recently fenced, because sufficient time has not passed.

But it is possible they do in fact have a claim for the driveway area, if they should choose to press it. Even if they have a claim it would be very difficult for them to press it - how would new owners prove 15+ years of continuous possession with all of the other conditions needed? - and they probably do not have any interest in pressing it. It takes a very special kind of asshole to make that kind of move. But still, it is the area of greatest pressing concern.

Back in about 1968 my dad and his buddy bought a 7 acre piece of property together. Buddy build his house on the front half and Dad built ours on the back half. They had a driveway that they had jointly built - it went around to the back of buddy's house and then branched off to their garage and our garage.

They finally got around to legally splitting the property some time later, and Dad thought it would be clever, instead of building in a right-of-way or easement or any such for the existing driveway, to draw a line down the middle of the driveway so that each of them owned half of it.

That gave our property frontage (albeit only 10 feet of it, and most of that was a ditch and ditchbank that ran along the property line). But it seemed like a good idea, and pretty well bulletproof, to have the driveway owned by both people, each owning one half of it.

Fast forward about 20 years and buddy has sold out. Rather jerkish new owners have moved in. They decide they needed their privacy and having Back Neighbor and various children, friends, etc, driving back and forth along a driveway (through their PROPERTY!@!!1!!1) was disturbing.

So they demanded Dad & family vacate the use of the driveway on any part of their property and find some other way to access the property from the road.

Now the "clever" solution turned out to be a trap.

- Usually neighbors with frontage must give right-of-way access to landlocked neighbors behind. But Dad's property was NOT landlocked - it had 10 feet of frontage. So, no dice. Use your ten feet and make a driveway any way you can.

- The 10 feet of right-of way wasn't really wide enough to build a proper driveway even under ideal conditions.

- The conditions were not ideal - half or more of this access strip was a ditch run by a local irrigation company and the ditchbank. Then a few feet were the former driveway. As a practical matter, building a driveway on this 10-foot strip was going to cost many, many tens of thousands of dollars.

- The irrigation company had some form of easement or access right, further complicating matters.

- Also their property ran to the ditch centerline so now to cover the ditch and build a driveway on top of it or whatever, you're dealing with THAT property owner, too - who may not want anything of the sort on their property or otherwise be difficult to deal with.

Jerk Neighbor would not back off or negotiate, so Dad ended up negotiating purchase of a strip of land from a different neighbor. Then that strip was used for a driveway into the property, completely avoiding Jerk Neighbor's property.

Getting this solution in place wasn't easy, either, as the new driveway accessed a private road - so now you're dealing with all the property owners living along that road.

Point is, driveways and that little strip of land that is supposed to be a driveway or an access point or whatever can be a real pain. Even owning the land and also using it daily, my Dad had trouble asserting effective property rights over it.

I just looked at the property records for that area and there is no trace of the 10-foot strip left. So either someone sold the strip to someone else, or it got eaten up somehow through technical glitches, or maybe the jerk neighbors even filed for it under adverse possession - who knows?

Thirty-three years later Jerk Neighbor still lives there, surrounded by a screen of tall fences and giant trees, and the guy who bought our house from Dad still drives to his house a different and longer way.
posted by flug at 5:15 PM on September 4, 2021 [10 favorites]

One other thing to consider/check : Some towns have regulations about building fences and /or require permits. Make sure that you are within whatever regulations there may be and then see if neighbors are. Getting the town to tell them to move the fence or take it down may be a good way to avoid direct conflict.

Listen to what JIMN2TAW wrote above. While it is not legal advice, it is coming from someone who has more knowledge about it than most of us.
posted by AugustWest at 5:54 PM on September 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

Seconding what AugustWest said about getting the city setbacks surveyed and the permits for fencing the property in place. No one wants to find the city utilities trying to do sewer or water line work around their prize begonias or fancy she-cave. They have legal access, and your stuff will be displaced.
Surveyors are your friends when it comes time for property sales. Get this nailed down before more money changes hands.
Don't apologize. This is early in the home ownership game and it is to your neighbor's best interest to get the property lines established. This should have been discovered before the time of sale, but some people do not look at the county property records before buying land (?!)
posted by TrishaU at 12:07 PM on September 6, 2021