3 ms·

From what I've seen of several such issues in the US, this is not legal advice, but if it ever happens to you, you are well advised to A: hire out a surveyer or

by jerf 6y ago

From what I've seen of several such issues in the US, this is not legal advice, but if it ever happens to you, you are well advised to A: hire out a surveyer or do whatever it takes to be absolutely sure you are correct before proceeding down this list B: issue notice to all the correct locations (to the violator and the relevant boards in charge of the lines) and then C: after a suitable, but not too long period of time, take concrete action to remove the offending things. Hire a lawyer somewhere in the mix to be sure you're not violating any other local laws. (I especially don't know what you should do with the "offending things", e.g., can you take them yourself? Do you have to throw them back on the property line side? What if this involves a certain amount of demolition? I don't know.) I've seen a number of people in my extended social circles do varying combinations of A and B, but still eventually losing because of a failure to do C, because they don't want to be confrontational or whatever. (I am specifying "in the US" because I'm fairly sure this is related to common law. Countries operating under other traditions may not see this effect. However in common law, there's a certain element of having to be able to "defend" your property in order for it to be yours.)

jeffbee 6y ago
I'm not sure what the "neutral strip" means, but if it's something like the sidewalk in front of a house, then the relevant US law would be that public property cannot be acquired through adverse possession, no matter how persistent the trespasser may be.
- aetherspawn 6y ago
  In this case it was a council-owned dirt road between two unfenced properties. By moving his property onto the road and erecting a pergola on the road, the path of the road moved onto our property, which he then claimed was the true location of the road. Then he pulled up fruit trees that were planted at the front of our property (for privacy) because now it seemed like they were planted on the strip, which is supposed to be empty. In truth, those fruit trees made it obvious that he had moved the road and that's why he wanted to pull them up. The 'neutral strip' that they auctioned off, was actually the very tippy end of the road (which they can do, unless it hinders someones driveway access), and we lost access to our second driveway, which is entirely illegal except there's a whole bunch of legal nonsense you have to submit to keep a driveway valid after it becomes blocked for a certain period of time, otherwise the driveway is automatically considered cancelled (in this case, his pergola blocked it for long enough that you need a new driveway permit if you can believe it). A new driveway permit can not be approved if the driveway can not be accessed, and so the fun begins. To make the driveway valid, and hence the sale of the land under the pergola illegal, they made it seem like we needed to forfeit the strip to general access... I'm not even being sarcastic when I say that surveying property borders, roads and driveways seems like a perfect application for an immutable and easily auditable blockchain based on lat/lon.

by jerf 6y ago

jeffbee 6y ago

I'm not sure what the "neutral strip" means, but if it's something like the sidewalk in front of a house, then the relevant US law would be that public property cannot be acquired through adverse possession, no matter how persistent the trespasser may be.

aetherspawn 6y ago
In this case it was a council-owned dirt road between two unfenced properties. By moving his property onto the road and erecting a pergola on the road, the path of the road moved onto our property, which he then claimed was the true location of the road. Then he pulled up fruit trees that were planted at the front of our property (for privacy) because now it seemed like they were planted on the strip, which is supposed to be empty. In truth, those fruit trees made it obvious that he had moved the road and that's why he wanted to pull them up. The 'neutral strip' that they auctioned off, was actually the very tippy end of the road (which they can do, unless it hinders someones driveway access), and we lost access to our second driveway, which is entirely illegal except there's a whole bunch of legal nonsense you have to submit to keep a driveway valid after it becomes blocked for a certain period of time, otherwise the driveway is automatically considered cancelled (in this case, his pergola blocked it for long enough that you need a new driveway permit if you can believe it). A new driveway permit can not be approved if the driveway can not be accessed, and so the fun begins. To make the driveway valid, and hence the sale of the land under the pergola illegal, they made it seem like we needed to forfeit the strip to general access... I'm not even being sarcastic when I say that surveying property borders, roads and driveways seems like a perfect application for an immutable and easily auditable blockchain based on lat/lon.