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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Indiana
    Posts
    11

    Default Neighbors Wants to Sue Over Trees Being Cut Down, Weed Removal

    My question involves real estate located in the State of: Indiana

    We recently purchased a house with about an acre of land. My husband an the neighbor's husband are friends. We did not have a survey done when we purchased the house, so were unsure of the exact property lines in the back parcel of land. The neighbors have their yard fenced in, but apparently did not have a survey done when they bought the house either. They recently had a survey done and we discovered that their back yard came about 35 feet past their fence in what we thought was "our backyard". The 35 feet of area was heavily over run with weeds and had an uprooted tree that had been left their forever and was infested with mice. My husband cut down a few small, weed-like trees(sassafras) before the survey took place and before we knew that was actually their property. In one instance the husband actually helped him. Now that the survey is done, the wife is threatening to sue us for cutting trees down on "her property". These trees were like weeds and the neighbor's husband said he was glad that they were cut down and he was happy as that would save him a lot of work, with the work we have already done.
    They never said anything when we cleaned up the brush, or removed some of the weeds. Would her case hold up in court for something like this? The husband wants no part of what she is doing, but I doubt he will testify against his own wife if it came to it. Also when we moved in there was already a couple huge trees that had been previously cut down(not by us), that were still laying in lumbers.
    I have tried talking to her, but she won't talk to me. I wanted to offer to replace the couple of sassafras trees that we actually did cut down before we knew that was there property, but I am afraid that is like admitting doing something wrong.
    Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    MD
    Posts
    101

    Default Re: Neighbors Wants to Sure Over Weeds/Trees Being Cut Down

    I'd get a metal detector to look for sunken iron posts marking the property boundaries, and the plats for nearby houses, and satisfy yourself about the boundaries. A telephone pole distributing elec. power is a likely boundary candidate. You may also want to rent a transit and a long steel tape.

    Try to find out if your neighbor lady is chronically litigious, as people with a Paranoid Personality Disorder tend to be. Check the courthouse.

    I guess you could also send her a bill for your labor.

    This broad search may possibly be helpful to you.
    http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
    Using Google's Advanced Search option comes in handy, too.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Indiana
    Posts
    11

    Default Re: Neighbors Wants to Sure Over Weeds/Trees Being Cut Down

    A little update in case anyone was interested. The neighbor husband was able to get his wife to come over and talk to us. She flat out said she doesn't like white people and that she is not a "friendly" person so she does not want to work anything out between us. Those were her exact words!!!We were hoping to get them to agree to a boundary line adjustment since our property goes all the way up to 10 feet away from the house on the front, and there back property comes 35 feet over into what "appeared" to be our yard. We would give them 30 feet of our front parcel and they would give us 30 feet of their back...Since the front parcel is longer, we'd actually be giving up a little more land in the deal, but this would make for much easier fencing and landscaping.
    She flat out said that she doesn't care how stupid it looks, she is fencing in(with chain link or chicken wire!!) her exact property line on a slant. She is going to have to regrade a section of the land on an angle and put some sort of retaining wall.
    I am trying to find out from my seriously disorganized town if there was ever a variance given her for their house to be built so closely to our property line...The code says it should be 40 feet away, but it is only 13 feet away. Even if there was no variance given, I doubt there is anything I can do at this point. I was hoping I could use that to get them to do a BLA but, she flat our has refused.
    The good news is I think she found out she can not sue us for weed removal on property neither of us were unsure of.
    So if we sell the house, do we have to disclose that our neighbor lady is crazy?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    California
    Posts
    540

    Default Re: Neighbors Wants to Sue Over Trees Being Cut Down, Weed Removal

    Quote Quoting Jbernacchi
    Would her case hold up in court for something like this?
    Yes. Being ignorant or even misinformed about the property line is not a legal justification for even setting foot on her property. But she might not win much.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    El Dorado County, CA
    Posts
    395

    Default Re: Neighbors Wants to Sure Over Weeds/Trees Being Cut Down

    I need to step in to comment on Tort's advice in his first post. Since you've already had a survey done, it's moot to you, but for anyone else reading and thinking the advice may apply to them. IT DOES NOT.

    If you don't know where your boundaries are, uneducated guesswork is not the way to go. If you have a survey map of your property, if you know how to read that map to identify what kind of markers the surveyor set or found at your corners, and you are able to find those markers, then you're in pretty good shape.

    In Jbrenacchi's case, she has a jog in the property line part way back at an alley she was initially planning to apply to the City to abandon (see other thread she started). If you have a jog, any angle point in your line between markers, or for whatever reason cannot see from one marker at the end of a line to the one on the other end of the line, it is a very bad idea to play amatuer surveyor. Just as most would have more sense than to go to Office Max and pick up a packet of legal forms to set up their own trust, I would hope that they have more sense than to rent a transit and tape and attempt to survey their own boundaries. Not only does it not make sense (boundary surveying is as much a legal exercise as it is a measurement and math exercise), in most locations it would be illegal to survey your own boundary and then represent it as the boundary to your neighbor.

    Land Surveying, like law, is a licensed profession because it takes special training, not only in the science of measurement, but in the legal side of boundary determination (a process of the analysis and use of various forms of evidence). Most states will allow a landowner to do survey work within one's own property, such as determning the shape of ground where you intend to do some landscape improvements, but does not allow the landowner to survey where it will affect the property of another, such as locating your boundary.

    Using power poles and other utility service connections as indicators of property lines will often get you within a few feet, but not always. In residential areas, utility companies will often place their poles or water meters near a property corner and serve the two nearest homes from there. With water meters, often the property boundary will be somewhere between the meter boxes, but again, not always. The utility companies put in their facilities to deliver services to the homes, not to mark the boundaries. Sometimes an easment for a pole or transformer is completely on one property. Sometimes the mater boxes are built entirely on one property because of other considerations. Using a utility service point to get a ROUGH idea of boundary location in a neighborhood where it is well established that such services were built at or near the lines can be useful. But even in such neighborhoods, relying on the utility connection point as marking the boundary is a very, very poor idea, because it doesn't, except occasionally by coincidence.

    I grew up in an area with people of several different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and have been wronged by and treated well be members of virtually every group. The one thing I have learned is that entrenched racism, by a person of any group toward those of any other group is nearly always impossible to overcome, especially from someone of the hated group. The fact that she knows you want something of her makes it even worse. She will know that you are trying to relate to her just to get something from her, not because you have any desire to be her friend. It would come of as hollow and phony is it is.

    Excusing racism as "adaptive and necessary" is ridiculous, and I think an unconciously racist remark in itself. I'm suspect that the excuse would not be applied to white rednecks who have an irrational hatred of minorities, nor should it be. By suggesting that it somehow legitimate for a minority person sends the message that the excuser thinks that while the white person with such an irrational hateful attitude should be reasonably expected to overcome their ignorance and get beyond their racism, the minority's inferior intellect cannot be reasonably expeted to exhibit the same level of reasoning. Insulting.

    You can try Tort's pseudo-psychology advice, but I suspect it is as good as his survey advice and will likewise cause more problems that you don't currently have. I also suspect that he and I have about the same educational qualifications to offer psychological opinion, which is a couple of psychology classes in college, but he seems to lack any direct experience on the subject.


    Tort, sorry to hit so hard, but you touched on two hot buttons. One is my area of professional expertise, and the other is bigotry disguised as compassion. I doubt that you think of yourself as racist. Most white people who readily excuse poor behavior in brown people don't even realize that it's because they have such low expectations of darker races which is really a lack of respect as equal human beings. Examine your expectations.

    Apologies to all others for going so far off topic.


    [Edit: That was rather strange. All below here was typed in reply to another reply by Tort which he has since removed. Anyway, I'll leave it here as there is some advice which he may find helpful to a somewhat related situation regarding conflicting and erroneous surveys he related in the now-gone post]

    I don't believe that I set up a strawman. We will likely not agree on the racism issue beyond the fact that it is a learned attitude and not something one is born with, so I'll drop it.

    As to filing a complaint for an incorrect survey, the County is not the place to do that. The County Clerk or Recorder's Office acts as a repository for recorded surveys, but they have no authority to or direct interest in reprimanding a licensed surveyor. Same goes for the County Surveyor, if your County has one. That is done through the State licenseing board for surveyors. Use Google and use your State, "surveyor", and "licensing" as search terms and you should come up with the correct agency. There should be a link on their main page for enforcement matters and filing complaints. If not, call them and ask for the enforcement division to find out what information they would need you to provide to pursue a complaint investigation.

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