Guide · Real Estate

Neighbor Law: A Comprehensive Guide to Boundaries, Easements, Nuisance, and Adverse Possession

42 U.S.C. § 3604

Type
Guide
Jurisdiction
National
Date
2025-02-21
Topic
Real Estate

This guide is a complete working treatment of the law governing disputes between adjoining landowners. Part I covers boundary determination, from deed descriptions and the priority of conflicting calls through the survey that converts an argument into a fact. Part II works the doctrines by which long use changes rights — adverse possession element by element, prescriptive easements and the crucial distinction between ownership and use, and the acquiescence, agreement, and estoppel doctrines that often produce the fence-is-the-boundary result more easily. Part III covers easements comprehensively: creation by grant, implication, necessity, prescription, and estoppel; questions of scope, maintenance, and relocation; and termination. Part IV covers covenants and servitudes, including the enforceability limits established in Shelley v. Kraemer and the deference standards applied to community associations. Part V works private nuisance and the doctrines that limit it, including the general absence of rights to light, air, and view. Parts VI through VIII cover trees and fences, water and support, and remedies, with particular attention to the relative-hardship doctrine that governs whether an encroachment must actually be removed. A verification list and authorities table close the guide.

Neighbor Law: A Comprehensive Guide to Boundaries, Easements, Nuisance, and Adverse Possession

Real Estate > Property Rights | Published 21 February 2025 - Updated 5 October 2025 | UpLaw - uplaw.us

In brief. Four questions, asked in order, resolve nearly every dispute between adjoining owners: where is the line, who has acquired rights across it, what may each owner do on their own side, and what will a court actually order. Confusing them is why these disputes cost so much and last so long.

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