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Dastardly Dave wrote:
If I've read the rest of the thread correctly, whether or not she can enter into contracts is sort of irrevelent, the point is, these neighbours are asking her to do something completely unreasonable and unfair. Unless she owns the house legally, can enter into contracts under canadian law AND has already signed one saying she will pay up, she is completely at liberty (I believe) to tell them to go away and leave her alone, which is what I strongly advise her to do.

It doesn't really matter that she doesn't own the abutting property. Luna's neighbors are essentially asking her to enter into a verbal contract under which terms she would pay for a portion of the costs of the fence. They could make the same request of a guy jogging past the house at noon tomorrow.

The issue of property only come in because of the damage done to her parent's property.

In this situation, given that Luna is unlikely to be able to leverage action on the part of her neighbors, I would:

1. Take many pictures. Dated, and correlated to their requests for money.
2. Obtain names, and contact information for all the involved parties; including the inhabitants, the contractors, and the officer who was spoken to.
3. Consult the statute of limitations for property damage.
4. If your parents will return within the time allotted by the statute of limitations, fix the fence.
5. Tell your parents to bring suit; most likely it would be in small claims court.

Waaa...

Ok here goes, please bear in mind that I am from the UK so our laws may be a little different.

The question of who owns (and is responsible for the upkeep) of the fence should be on your property deeds, in the UK the home owner is usualy responsable for the fence (or other border) to their right as they face away from the property, although many will have a shared responsability.

What sort of state was your fence in before they built their house? If it was in a poor state of repair and is your responsability to upkeep then they may be being generous by offering to pay for half of a new fence. However (and I would guess this is most likely) if they are responsible and have damaged a perfectly secure and well maintained fence then they are being cheeky and should do the work themselves. This also includes the cost of any damage or inconvienience caused by them having to do any of the work on your land (although putting up a fence should cause little or no damage).

The best thing you can do is to check your property deeds. Just remember to be firm but polite at all times when dealing with them as bad feeling between neighbours can be a real pain in the arrse.

Just as an aside, if you are renting the property then this should not affect you in any way, just contact your landlord and they should deal with it, if they don't give your neighbours his number.

As for the cost of fences (again bear in mind this is UK prices) they are normaly bought in parts. A standard fence panel is roughly 6ft long and 6ft high. It should cost you about £15 per panel, the posts will be 4" by 4" and 8ft tall, these will cost about £8 each. I find it is best to concrete them into the ground as it gives a much sturdier hold, you will need approximately 1 bag of concrete per post, these will cost about £4 each. So for a 120 ft run you are looking at roughly £300 to £350 for materials and then it will probably take two guys between a day and a day and a half to do the job. Depending on how much labour is in Canada I would guess it would cost a total of about £700.

squilverine wrote:Ok here goes, please bear in mind that I am from the UK so our laws may be a little different.

Laws can vary by a large degree, even between cities.

As for the cost of fences (again bear in mind this is UK prices) they are normaly bought in parts. A standard fence panel is roughly 6ft long and 6ft high. It should cost you about £15 per panel, the posts will be 4" by 4" and 8ft tall, these will cost about £8 each.

That is interesting, I am sure I have seen fences like that, but I have never actually installed one using materials of that sort.

Are you talking about something like this?

I find it is best to concrete them into the ground as it gives a much sturdier hold, you will need approximately 1 bag of concrete per post, these will cost about £4 each. So for a 120 ft run you are looking at roughly £300 to £350 for materials and then it will probably take two guys between a day and a day and a half to do the job. Depending on how much labour is in Canada I would guess it would cost a total of about £700.

How large are bags of concrete out there? I usually need at least 2-3, 60 lb. bags for a 2-3' hole.

Wrexasaur wrote:

squilverine wrote:Ok here goes, please bear in mind that I am from the UK so our laws may be a little different.

Laws can vary by a large degree, even between cities.

As for the cost of fences (again bear in mind this is UK prices) they are normaly bought in parts. A standard fence panel is roughly 6ft long and 6ft high. It should cost you about £15 per panel, the posts will be 4" by 4" and 8ft tall, these will cost about £8 each.

That is interesting, I am sure I have seen fences like that, but I have never actually installed one using materials of that sort.

Are you talking about something like this?

I find it is best to concrete them into the ground as it gives a much sturdier hold, you will need approximately 1 bag of concrete per post, these will cost about £4 each. So for a 120 ft run you are looking at roughly £300 to £350 for materials and then it will probably take two guys between a day and a day and a half to do the job. Depending on how much labour is in Canada I would guess it would cost a total of about £700.

How large are bags of concrete out there? I usually need at least 2-3, 60 lb. bags for a 2-3' hole.

That pretty much the style of things, although the panels are nothing near that fancy, they are more llike this



Also I may have been a little optimistic with the concrete, our bags are normaly 60 - 80 pounds so depending on how well you want it to set you may need between 1,1/2 - 2 bags per post

As has been noted:
1. Unless I missed it, no one one posting, including myself, are licensed to practice law in the particular Canadian province you live in. having said that you have two separate legal issues here-damage to your property, and the the other property owner building a fence and wanting you to pay. US custom and laws are likely different so I'll stop here on that.

2. Keep a record of all damage that you can including: pics with time stamps (as noted by Nurglitch) videos, pictures in general, or written statements by the other property owner or their renters.

3. Agree to nothing. It is likely you do not have capacity to do so. State such. Your parents, who if I read correctly are the property owners, are the ones to handle this.

As has been noted:
1. Unless I missed it, no one one posting, including myself, are licensed to practice law in the particular Canadian province you live in. having said that you have two separate legal issues here-damage to your property, and the the other property owner building a fence and wanting you to pay. US custom and laws are likely different so I'll stop here on that.

2. Keep a record of all damage that you can including: pics with time stamps (as noted by Nurglitch) videos, pictures in general, or written statements by the other property owner or their renters.

3. Agree to nothing. It is likely you do not have capacity to do so. State such. Your parents, who if I read correctly are the property owners, are the ones to handle this.

Nevertheless, it's always nice to call the local building inspector out. He knows the codes and can have them enforced.

My parents had a dispute with a neighbor, and ended up building a large, intimidating fence on one side of their property to kind of give him the "feth you"...

Only problem is, it's permanent. Relationships have been destroyed with said neighbor.

In my opinion, it's not worth it to go to war with them over this, or to take it to court, go to the extent of the law, or any of that.

I'd try to resolve it in as civil of a manner as possible... which, as your initial thought was, would probably be to politely let them know that you simply can't afford to build a new fence right now, and could they just repair yours that was damaged during construction?

I had a situation with my landlord not dis-similar to this. After moving out, we found out that we had been paying the electricity bill for our neighbor's apartment, rather than our own. Theirs was larger, and it explains why the bill was always so high, and why it didn't go down when we went to great lengths to use less power. To remedy this, rather than take him to court (we have a pretty good relationship) we simply asked him to pay the last month's electric bill for us.

It didn't completely make up the lost income, but it also didn't screw him over... and it was a reasonable solution for both sides that kept our relationship intact.

So I'd politely let them know that you can't afford to pay for a new fence, and ask them if they could fix the one that was damaged during construction.

LunaHound wrote:Regarding the survey and the property line ,
im sure the constructor MUST have them to be legally buildthing things right?

If i ask them to provide the info , its illegal for them to lie to where the line is right?
Was thinking if i should just ask them then pay for $500 @_@

Now I am confused, is it their contractor who broke your fence? If so tell him you will need his insurance information to bill them for repairs.

If they don't have a contractor for the fence then I stand by my first statement. They need separate permits for the fence, the house, sheds/garages, pools, ect. And all of them have to be posted in view.


As for your second question, yes it is illegal to put a fence to close or over the line. In my area there needs to be a 6" space between the fence and the neighbors property line, if you build closer to this the zoning department will order you to take it all down and start over again.

I would get a quote from a contractor first before excepting $500, you never know it might cost more than that to fix what is broken.

Okee dokee , things are taken care of ( atleast my part ) as of today.

A VERY BIG THANK YOU for ALL of you that helped me / put up with my dumbness .

Im just trying to cope with all the situations that seem to appear when no one is here to take care of them. So im afraid to say ... I have actually more issues that need attended , but maybe next time ( you guys need your rest :'P)

Thank you again!

(PS anyone that works with Royal Bank or Bank in general want to PM me? I need help lol )

Of course situations like this come up when your parents aren't here.

Do you know how easy it is to screw over a minor who doesn't know the proper way to deal with contracting/zoning laws?

LunaHound wrote:Okee dokee , things are taken care of ( atleast my part ) as of today.

A VERY BIG THANK YOU for ALL of you that helped me / put up with my dumbness .

Im just trying to cope with all the situations that seem to appear when no one is here to take care of them. So im afraid to say ... I have actually more issues that need attended , but maybe next time ( you guys need your rest :'P)

Thank you again!

(PS anyone that works with Royal Bank or Bank in general want to PM me? I need help lol )

Don't worry it will get worse, then you will die. After five frankly, its all down hill.

Five?

Pshaw. The glory days are two--where you get to throw fits left and right and bite people with no consequences!

LunaHound wrote:Yes thats what i believe too , that they destroyed the fence on purpose and hopefully , they get to have a fence for half price.
I asked them in the beginning , why dont they just repair what they broke. They said the fence doesnt look good next to their new house.
So yes... i dont trust them since the very beginning.

So basically (this is what i think)

They dont have fence , we do , but they dont like how it looks.
They want new one , but dont want to pay for it all.
Break my fence , and ask for half half...
Hope i fall for it.

From what you have said and the diagram, they have nothing to stand on, they without permission damaged, as to knock down, your fence that is on your land because they don't like it. it would be like you going into someones garden and 'accidentily' kicking up all their flowers.

We had a similair problem, the people next door are mean, old and bitter (the only words that fittingly describe them) they live in a familly orietated village but hated my brothers and sisters playing in the street during daylight hours, and other such assholery. They put up a fence, they told us so we kept the dogs in then when we fit a new gate that matches the fence my dad had to put a bolt on the door so he drilled a 1cm wide 1cm deep hole in a large fence post. After which she goes mental and stays saying she'll get us in all forms of trouble, from this point on for the next 4 months she basically harrasses us for all manner of reasons, until my step mum finals goes to the land registery to get the plans for our house, it turns not only did they build the fence on our land, giving them a few inches on their border, they also built a whole wall of a small extension on our land, so the last time she harassed us my step mum fact slapped her, shut her up faster than super glue. i feel sorry for her husband he is whipped.

Gotta love land titles and actually looking at what you own. There used to be a little back alley between our house and the ones behind us, kids used it to get to and from school, but they also harassed our dogs and were annoying so we looked at our land title and it turns out we owned the land, put up the fences ourselves and had no complaints until some new neighbors moved in halfway through our construction. Our new fence would go along the old fences of our neighbors and they wanted us to put a gate in it so in case there was a fire they could get out using it. We thought it was total bunk and put no gate in it.



This is what we use, its cheap and keeps nosy neighbors out of our business.