miamicuse wrote:
Just purchased a property and after doing the survey, I realized my
new
neighbor planted a palm on my property...The palm is about 8 feet tall
and
has a terra cotta border (round about 3 feet in diameter) with mulch.
I am
planning to construct a fence which will cut right through this terra
cotta
border with the palm ending on my side completely.

How should I handle this situation? I don't think it is practical to
up
root the palm and plant it on their side, nor stopping and starting
the
fence and leave a gap where this palm is...

This is hardly a gardening question. It's a neighbor relations issue,
and a legal issue.

How long has the neighbor been using your property? If it's been long
enough, and under the right conditions, adverse possession may apply.
They could turn around and officially take the property from you. (I'm
assuming that your surveyors did a title search, and didn't just rely on
old documents.)

From a less legal, and more practical standpoint, the property line is
something that neighbors agree on. Obviously there isn't an agreement
here. The question is why. You think the property line is at a certain
place because you have a survey in hand. Assuming the survey is correct,
that's as good of a reason as can be for you believing the property line
is where you believe it is. So why do your neighbors believe it's
somewhere else? And exactly where do they believe it is?

If you just storm in and start building a fence where you think the line
is, you may ultimately be proven to be entirely within your rights...
but it would be at the expense of any civil relationship with those
neighbors. If they think the property line is somewhere else, it doesn't
matter if they're right or wrong, from their perspective you're
attacking, and forcefully trying to take their property.

Now your neighbors may be pure asses, and you may end up at war with
them no matter how well you handle the situation. But do you want a
guaranteed war, or do you want to at least try to work out this
disagreement by talking instead of just building a fence?

So my two pieces of advice are to talk to an attorney, laying out ALL
the relevant facts (such as time frames, who's caring for the land now,
and how long they have been, etc.), and get a legal opinion. Once you
know your true position in this situation, then talk to your neighbors.
Informally is best at first. You might get lucky, and they'll just say,
"oops! Our mistake. We're sorry". Or they might want to sit down and
more formally examine the situation, and still resolve it peacefully and
civilly. Or they might want to fight for the disputed territory.

But whatever road is taken, it will be no higher than how you start the
resolution process. If you start the resolution process with an act of
war, then you'll get no better than war. If you start as neighborly as
possible, the road may not continue so high, but at least there's a
possibility that it will be so high.

Once you and your neighbor come to a mutual understanding of where the
property line is (which absent other facts, I'll assume is where your
survey says it is), then you can talk about what to do about the palm
and any other landscaping they did on your side of the line. Then you'll
have a gardening question. But for now, you have a legal and neighbor
relations question that needs to be resolved before gardening becomes
the issue.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.

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