Visitors Are Vengeful in Shared Drive

[tmossman]

We rent our home and the driveway is shared by a homeowner next door. He lives alone and parks in his yard. He also has a parking slab he has added to his front yard. The drive is narrow for one car between the houses and widens past the houses for two cars. When we learned how a shared drive is used we made more efforts to not block the drive and began parking in our yard (against our lease). It is extremely difficult to park in the back on the shared drive because it is in EXTREMELY bad shape and our car is small and low.

My question is, does his visitors have a right to intentionally block in our car and berate us if we do not pull our car all the way to the back when we do park there?(it was an extremely heavy downpoor and we didn't want to park on the grass and cause a rut). He could have parked in the parking pad and when he became angry because I asked him not to curse at me in front of my daughter, he refused to move. (He later returned and move his truck after more yelling). We have no problem with our neighbor, we keep to ourselves and we are easy to get along with. It is easy for us to apologize for causing an inconvenience, but what are the laws surrounding this?

[yyz0]

The most common questions that is first asked in response to your questions would be "what state are you in and what does your deed say about the shared driveway?"

But since you are just a renter(no offense intended!), you probably would not know that or have access to it.

Have you spoken to your landlord about this? Where are you supposed to park according to your lease? Do you know which property "owns" the shared drive? Have you spoken to your landlord about these issues? Have you or your landlord spoken to your neighbor about this visitor and his treatment of you?

From my own experiences with a right of way that i use and from what I've read here on this forum there is not a lot of help out there without spending $$$ on lawyers and courts.

I had problems with others blocking the ROW that I use to access the road from my property. I tried complaining to the town building department, and they were very unhelpful. Saying things like "maybe you could have your lawyer send them a letter about blocking the ROW" But we don't have a lawyer and wondered why we can't get help without spending money to get lawyers and courts involved. Where the town building inspector did help was as soon as I mentioned "what about emergency vehicles not being able to get through?" Then he said that is something he can take action on, he stopped by and explained the situation to the neighbors about blocking shared drive and if they continued he would issue them a firecode violation. Since then the blocking has stopped.

I would suggest speaking to your landlord before you pursue any other channels.

Also, as a separate issue of the vengeful visitor. Next time they visit, take your cell phone with you and if they start yelling at you then just dial 911 and explain that there is a stranger in your driveway yelling and cursing at you and you are afraid for you and children's safety. I'm sure that if the offender hears you calling the police about him, his tune will change pretty quickly. Understand that the police won't get involved in the parking dispute but if he is making afraid for your safety that is a different issue