Article · Real Estate
Good Fences: The Law of Boundaries, Trees, Noise, and the Neighbor Who Will Not Stop
- Type
- Article
- Jurisdiction
- National
- Date
- 2024-09-26
- Topic
- Real Estate
Neighbor disputes are the most emotionally intense and least well understood category of property litigation, and almost all of them reduce to four legal questions that ordinary people never learn to separate. This article separates them: where the boundary is, who owns the strip that has been used as though it were somewhere else, what a neighbor may do on their own land that affects yours, and what remedies a court will actually grant. It works the doctrines that decide each — adverse possession and its elements, prescriptive easements and the crucial difference between owning land and having a right to use it, boundary by acquiescence and agreement, private nuisance and the balancing that produced Boomer v. Atlantic Cement, and the general rule that neither light nor view is protected absent a statute or covenant. It covers trees, fences, water, and lateral support, each of which follows its own rules, and explains why the remedy question — damages, injunction, or a court-ordered payment for a permanent invasion — often determines whether a case is worth bringing. It closes with the practical sequence that resolves most of these disputes without litigation, starting with a survey.
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