law/property question
 

say i have a house maybe 25 feet or so from a creek/stream/waterway/whatever. this crazy redneck lady actually owns this strip of land, but as it's too small to do anything with she's let my family use it as a driveway for 60 years. all of a sudden she decides she wants to reclaim it and puts up a big fence right down the middle, claiming back her ~15 foot wide strip of land by the creek.

what legal rights might i have to get this bitch to take down her fence? anyone know where i could find such information?

jw.

Haha. Have fun trying to sue her.

i know right, ugh

are your cars wider than the 10 feet that's left?

it's mostly the aesthetic problem the fence presents, also i'm afraid of what she's going to decide to do with the land. it's too small for a house but i know she owns a trailer >_<

Have you talked to her about it?

She owns the land, she can do anything within municipal codes to it.

"I'm a whiny bitch-ass neighbor" isn't reason for her to alter her property. And no one can make her - or waste time attempting - remove a fence placed on HER OWN PROPERTY that falls within code regulations.

Only options to investigate are easement restrictions, the compliance of the fence/materials and wetland riperian buffer restrictions.

oh, so he just needs to talk to his girlfriend, then.

Netphoria, legal adviser.

Netphoria, sex therapist.

Netphoria, hate monger.

As far as I know, you've got no legal recourse. It's her property, she can do with it as she pleases, even if that's putting a trailer on it.

She was simply being courteous to you and your family by letting you use the land as a driveway up to now.

when i was real young, my parents were able to get our neighbor's to replace or take down (don't remember which) a fence, but only because it was rotting and standing/leaning/falling onto our property.

you're probably SOL on this one

You might have some kind of recourse to enjoin her from using the property. Depending on the circumstances and the property laws of your state, you might have acquired what's called a prescriptive easement, which is basically an easement created by open and continuous use of another's property for a long period of time. But there are many factors specific to the situation that could help you or hurt you on that (e.g., whether that's the only driveway to your property, if it the only access to the creek, how often the driveway was used, whether she knew you used it, etc.). It probably wouldn't be a waste of time to run it by an attorney familiar with how such things work in your state.

Tell her she fucking built her fence on fifty piping plover nests and they're angry as shit now!!

Build a bigger uglier fence.

Now I remember why I hate poetry.

Yeah I thought of this but I didn't know the name of it and therefore couldn't google it. It IS the only access to the creek and the only driveway space on our property. She did know we used it, she had an agreement with my grandfather who just died recently, hence the fence.

i watched a dateline last year with this exact issue, both landowners died.

good luck

My mother lectures in property law. She says you've got fuck all to stand on.

sonic johnny:

did you know? you live in a completely different country!

I'm pretty sure they have fences in Australia.

Rabbit Proof ones.

I actually loled pretty hard on this.
speaking of, rabbit proof fence was a good movie.

Wow you guys actually hear about that shit in the real world?

it's because I'm ~*~culturally enlightened~*~

^ this

just ask a lawyer. even if you find the possible answer on the internet, you'll need the help from a lawyer to get any further, no? and it's not like you're going to opt for doing nothing about this situation, right? for fuck's sake, just go to a lawyer. jesus!

GET OFF MAH PROPERTY!!

i suggest you put some eggs through the lady's mailbox. that'll show her.

Corganist is way fucking off and has no idea what he's talking about.

That law is about like a farmer whose family has been running cows through a path for the last 4 generations, then you buy the property off the farmer's neighbor, and the farmer still has the right to run cows through there.

Fucking retard.

but he's a lawyer

i mean maybe you're right but i would hope he knows more than you when it comes to stuff like this.

Yes, your farmer scenario would be another situation where someone might gain a prescriptive easement, but surely you don't think that's the only way it can be created, do you? You can get an easement just by using someone's property for as little as 10 years as long as you do so in a open and continuous way. Hell, in a lot of states someone can squat on a piece of land and own the whole thing in a few years if the real owner never shows and the squatter pays the property tax on it. It doesn't take generations to acquire some kind of hostile legal interest in another's property.

But like I said, it'd really depend on what state 28if lives in and how courts there would treat these particular circumstances. Some courts are understandably reluctant to grant people legal access to the property of others. And I do think that the fact that the grandfather and the neighbor had some kind of agreement could be a killer to a prescriptive easement claim, especially if it was in writing. If your neighbor is nice enough to expressly let you use part of their property, then usually you can't take advantage of that generosity and claim an interest in it later if the permission is withdrawn. But then again, if it's the only driveway and thus the only way to access the family's property, then even that may not even matter. It could be that it'd be an easement by necessity.

There is nothing too farfetched about any of these possibilities based on what's been said here, at least not enough to justify not calling up someone familiar with the local property laws and running it all by them. I'm not saying that 28if's family has any right at all to stop the fence from being put up. I don't have enough information, and even if I did I still wouldn't say. I'm just saying that it's worth checking into just a little to see if there are options.