[2006] Another Encroachment Problem

[JLB]

We have a few hateful neighbors, ROFs who have nothing better to do than stick their nose in their neighbors' business and bully them around. One is especially bad and he has run off four or five families who have owned in our neighborhood.

Here's more than you need to know:

http://www.timeshareforums.com/showthread.php?t=2350

The property behind us has a 30-foot wide utility easement abutting and running the length of our lot. We have maintained the property in that easement in the 8 years we have owned our property. The previous owners of our property maintained it going back to at least 1991.

Last Spring, because of the dispute on our dock, the property owner behind us and two other ROFs, with all three wives helping, put a bunch of crap on that easement behind our house. An old broken down boat trailer, logs, yard waste, etc., and have not made any effort to maintain or clear vegetation in the last six months. They have stated publicly that they did that to make us uncomfortable, to force us to move so they can get someone in here they can dictate (yeah, I have that on tape, only it wasn't said that politely). That easement is ten feet from the back of our screen porch where we try to sit and enjoy the lake.

This summer they put up huge ugly blue tarps, on property they do not own, to block our view of the lake. Then they started coming onto the property next to us, shining lights in our windows at night, calling profanities at us, shooting guns, etc. The owner of that property, whom the bullies sucked into this, put an end to that on his property.

They burn their leaves and smelly whatever out there when the wind is blowing our way.

The neighbor directly behind us, say vice-bully, is a retired police captain.

Hold on, I'm getting there.

They have also gone to other neighbors and non-neighbors and used heavy-handed tactics to get them to do similar stuff to us. Tactics like, "We can do this to you, too, you know?" The head bully got an absentee lot owner who has not visited their property for many, many years to send me a letter ordering that I remove my boat trailer from his lot and stay off of it. For the 8-years we have been here we and others have stored our trailers there and have mowed it and removed leaves from it in return.

Getting closer.

One who is going along with them is our next-door neighbor. He bought his house from folks who were nice and friends of ours, but who got run off. He spies on us, staying inside keeping a crack of his drapes open. The head bully has taken him to the sheriff's office to testify (falsely) that we have been running around the neighborhood spying on people and harassing them.

OK, I'm there now.

His house is ten feet over our lot line. Really! It is in real life and it is on the survey. There is no dispute about it. It is on our lot.

That is common here. Actually every house but ours is encroaching on the neighbor's lot, or on Corps land, or on what is now the County road, or has an easement allowing the use of neighboring property.

There is no written agreement with our neighbor concerning the encroachment.

We share a well and when we bought our house I insisted that the sellers execute a water well agreement with the previous neighbors. In fact, that had not been done when we first came down to close and we walked. We closed when the water well agreement had been executed and recorded. That is common too.

So, what would you do with a next-door neighbor who is in cahoots with the hateful ones when his house is ten feet on our property?

 

[gmarine]

When you have a problem that no one else can solve, if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team !

 

[Keitht]

From what you are saying about them I would suggest the only way forward is legal action through the courts.

 

[CaliDave]

They already hate you so you might as well get your ten feet back. Tell them you need the space to park your boat trailer.

Or tell them, they win, you are moving and the new buyer won't close until the house is off their property

 

[JLB]

You are always right on, Dave. Jenny added that what would be most appropriate is that if we sell out to the bullies and then they insist he tear down his house.

I figured someone would suggest the same tact as Janie's neighbor~~~give him one day's notice and then go tear down ten feet of his house.
- - - - - - -

More seriously, I am considering sending our neighbor a letter, acknowledging his encroachment and making it clear that we have not given that ten feet of our property to him. I would say it never has been a problem in the past, when things were amicable between us or the previous owner of our house and the previous owners of his house, but . . .

Since the neighbors behind us, and their cohorts, got ----- about the easement behind us, I have been mowing all of our lot where our neighbor encroaches. I mow from the pin at the road up to his house, around it, and then to the pin in the back.

We have a little trailer back there and one of the bullies' wives told me to move our trailer off of (our neighbor's) property. Oops, best leave a sleeping dog lie. Her driveway encroaches on her neighbor's property to get to the road.

 

[CaliDave]

What part of the house in on your property?
Have a contractor come out and install a door on your portion, and be sitting in the room when he gets home.

It must be boredom that causes people to bully. Kids do this all the time.. Then people mature and have better things to do with thier time.. then they retire, get bored and act like kids again.

 

[Dee in California]

Suddenly, I feel this urge to go and hug my wonderful neighbors...

 

[JLB]

Dave:

We have not spent a lot of time in his house. Upstairs eight feet of his living room is on our property. Downstairs it is a converted garage. We don't know what he does down there. The other two feet is the deck on the front of his house and the steps down from it. In addition to the house itself, there is also a little flower bed and a concrete sidewalk.

Last month he had DISH installed. The DISH was put up on his roof at our end (or would that be our roof?). Our DISH is on our roof on his side of our house. When the installer was up there putting his up I looked up at him and said, "Just what I need~~~two DISHes." I don't think he understood.


Dee:

I'd be happy to come hug your neighbors.

 

[Jestjoan]

Where are the lawyers here? I think there is some kind of law where if you use a property as your own for so many years without objection, it goes to the one who is using it.

I hope I'm not way off base with this. I'd Google if I knew what it was called.....

 

[Jestjoan]

Squatters rights??????

 

[pegs099]

I wouldn't send that letter. I would contact a lawyer on this. For example, you may not want to acknowledge that you knew his property was encroaching, but that it was okay in the past. As far as the rest, put up a fence to cover the garbage. Plus, it'll drive them nuts wondering what you're doing behind the fence. And, I would record every harassing thing that happens, and call the police whenever any dispute came up.

 

[nightnurse613]

JLB, I've heard that good things come to those who wait (but I'm not waiting to inherit the earth) and this kind of reinforces my belief. From the other thread you must know that you cannot ignore "open and notorius occupation". You probably won't win your neighbors undying love but, I think you two are going to get to know each other much better. Sorry about that part.

 

[Moosie]

Joan it is Eminent Domain, but that might just be for government to use, I'm not sure if it falls under private property.

 

[DeniseM]

Sounds like a horrible situation...but why are they doing all this? What do they WANT?

 

[Jestjoan]

No, Moosie, I knew it wasn't eminent domain because that is government. I found from reading another thread it is called adverse posession.......

 

[arlene22]

Definitely contact a lawyer. But IMHO, sending a hostile letter may just reinforce the "hostile, open and notorious" requirement of adverse possession (must be continuous, hostile, open and notorious). Sometimes sending a registered letter that says, "It's my property. I'm letting you use it for now, and I reserve the right to revoke that permission in the future" is enough to break the chain, as the possession would no longer be "hostile". You could then revoke your permission next month; but the "clock" would be reset and they would have to start counting the time that they occupied the property in a continuous, hostile, open and notorious way from then. The prior time that they have occupied the property would not count as the chain of continuity would have been broken. I hope I'm explaining this clearly. It's a complicated topic. Definitely consult an attorney. There is also the issue of an easement, which requires a lower standard than adverse posssession. Your attorney can help there. Good luck.

~Arlene

 

[JLB]

Let me see if I can do this in order.

Jestjoan, Denise:

Read the thread on TS4Ms. Read Janie's thread. It is adverse possession.

This is an ongoing situation fueled by a neighborhood bully. He has run our neighborhood by threats and intimation for 16 years. We are being targeted because we will not give our approval, or money, to rebuild the community dock, something which requires approval of all of the slipowners. He and a couple of his ROF thugs have decided that their only course of action is to force us to move. He has been successful in that four times in the past.

We have bought another lot and dock down the road and will leave under our own terms.

I won't get into the lawyer thing other than to say that the head bully has coerced others to tell the sheriff that I am the one doing the harassing, so the two assault charges and the harassment charge against him have been dropped.

We got as far as meeting with an attorney to get a restraining order, but his minimum fee was $2500. At that time the criminal charges were such that an arrest appeared to be imminent, so we elected to let the criminal legal system run it's course.

I suspect that the civil side would run the same course as the criminal. In court it would be our word v. all of theirs.
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pegs, nightnurse:

Sorta what I'm trying to figure out. My gut feeling is that we should inform the neighbor that his use of our property should not be taken as our consent for him to take possession of our property. He has only been there 3 years so he has not met the requirements for adverse possession. Part of that, however, is that the party being encroached upon never objects, so I think we should.

They delight in upsetting us. We have called 911 several times for the assaults, lurking around under the cover of dark, gunshots, etc., and the first thing the deputies always say is, "You know he is just doing this to upset you, and it is working." Constructing a fence or doing anything to retaliate only encourages him/them, taking it to a higher level. We have found our best defense is to smile and wave. Then we really hear the profanity.

The log in my word processor is now 87 pages long, single-spaced of course, and I have sent more than 75 emails to the Chief Deputy, met with the Sheriff, Chief Deputy and Prosecutor, made several phone calls, have many audio tapes, plus photographs and video. But like I said above, the evil doer trumped all of that by coercing his friends to lie for him.

When the Presecutor called to tell me he was not pursuing this, he said, "This is clearly just a case of neighbors who can't get along. I have more people telling me it is you doing this to them than I have telling me it is them doing this to you."

The county does not really want to open this can of worms. Many neighborhoods have some retired person who should not be in charge of anything finding themselves empowered by being in charge of a community dock, association, road, etc. So many lack diplomacy. It is a problem the real estate industry also turns it's back on.

In our case, the head bully was in charge of everything~~~the dock, the road, the ditches, leaves, water running off your house . . . I worked with 26 property owners and got our road upgraded, paved, and turned over to the County, a $60000 project and something he never could get done. I don't think I need to explain the diplomacy required to get that done. I even got $7600 from the head bully! Now Jenny and I have our own dock down the road and he cannot even get his rebuilt. Enough said.

 

[JLB]

The shortest way to explain our problem is that three of our neighbors our old, retired and feel they are entitled. They don't care about laws, or process, respect for others, or anything else. All they care about is what they want and they want what they want when they want it.

For years and years they have never not gotten what they wanted.

I'm sure you know people like that.

 

[arlene22]

He has only been there 3 years so he has not met the requirements for adverse possession.

The chain of continuous adverse possession includes previous owners. Be careful.

 

[JLB]

The chain of continuous adverse possession includes previous owners. Be careful.

Good, in that case we can make claim to the strip of land behind us, since we and previous owners of our house maintained it, without objection, for more than 15 years.

I don't think I have mentioned yet that I looked into that, when the hateful neighbors behind us had another garage built (their third). The attorney I contacted said that the presiding judge hates property line cases and is very prejudiced against anyone who brings them.
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I guess the worst that could happen if I screwed this up is that we would lose that bit of land to a house that is already there. He is already parking his car in the driveway, over our line. Looking at our survey, his house is 5.4 feet over our line and the porch is 8.4 feet. His car varies.

 

[Gadabout]

Are you sure there is not some issue such as dementia involved? Are they driving safely?

From what you post (and in the other thread as well), it sounds like far more than a few people with nothing better to do in a neighborhood association/HOA taking over.

 

[JLB]

Are you sure there is not some issue such as dementia involved? Are they driving safely?

From what you post (and in the other thread as well), it sounds like far more than a few people with nothing better to do in a neighborhood association/HOA taking over.

I'm not sure I am following everything you are saying, bu, no dementia is not involved. Meanness and bullying is.

In our area we do do have far more than a few people with nothing better to do than stuff like this. In our case, however, it is really just one mean bully. If he were out of the picture the others would not tag along.

There are reasons why they tag along.

First, they could actually agree with him, that they are entitled to whatever they want whenever they want it, and are entitled to use whatever means they want to get it.

Second, they know they will be next if they don't.

Third, some are not permanent residents. This is their lake place. So they don't have to deal with it constantly. If they go along they are are treated well when they are here.

Fourth, they have not bothered to call the people who sold their houses to them, to find out why we are so out of line.

Like I said, I dealt with 26 property owners on the road, permanent and seasonal, and had no problems except for the three here at the end of the road, all who had had road responsibility before and had failed to get done what I did. They are the ones behind this.

 

[somerville]

A utility easement does not normally permit the use for other purposes. Unfortunately, I think it is time that you contact a lawyer and seek to enjoin the use for storage and other purposes. You may want to resolve the other property issues at the same time.

 

[JLB]

Because of Janie's situation, and this one, I pulled out my file from when I studied adverse possession previously.

Under that topic on real-estate-law.freeadvice.com, it says "If you own land, it is important that you not sleep on your rights since you could lose ownership of the land."

It also says, "The theory is that by not disputing your neighbor's use of your property through a lawsuit you as the actual owner have abandoned your rights to the property."

Another site specific to our state says that those who are using another's land with the consent of the true owner cannot claim advice possession because it is not hostile.

I just called another attorney and he is going hunting. He is blind so we don't know exactly how he does that. He is also a County Prosecuting Attorney. I told him the problem will still be here when he gets back.

We're on our way to Silver Dollar City to meet some TUGgers. I hope this is solved when we get back.

 

[arlene22]

They can certainly argue that your lack of enforcement constitues abandonment. That argument may or may not work.

It's a very sticky business, and that is why you need the guidance of an experienced real estate attorney (not a general practice attorney). Careful navigation of the situation is required. There is a lot at stake, after all.

If you tell them to leave, and they don't, then that is undeniably hostile, open and notorious possession (bolstering their claim for adverse possession). You really have to have a plan in place as to how you are going to enforce it if (when) they refuse/ignore your order. Otherwise you will have strengthened their case for legally taking your land. A lawyer may advise you to break the chain by giving permission (briefly) thereby restarting the clock (interrupts the continuously hostile part of the requirement). That would give you more time to explore your options and formulate your strategy.