Hello! We are in a bit of quandary with our neighbours. They are very nice neighbours and we get on well.
Our neighbours had a very large (over 100ft) soft wood tree in the very corner of their garden which bent over and so covered half of our garden (which is 1/2 an acre!) (it did not fall over their garden at all as bent). We didn’t mind too much but this year extremely large branches began to fall down, first it happened in a storm and then we had a couple come down with totally normal weather. We were very concerned about this as had a branch fallen on us or more worryingly one of our children they would almost certainly have died due to the size and height. We got a tree surgeon in and cut it right back over our side costing £1000 but the tree surgeon said there was no way to keep it 100% safe unless we cut the tree down completely. We could cut it right back to the trunk but it would continue to grow rapidly.
We discussed with our neighbours and came to the decision that it needed to be cut down to keep everyone safe. They got 2 quotes, one for £10,000 and one for £7,500 from original tree surgeon so went with that one. Originally they were booked for December and our neighbours decided not to stump grind the tree as this was an extra £1000.
In the meantime we were looking at our garden as with the tree branches gone we could actually get things to grow and grass to grow which we previously hadn’t done due to lack of light. Our garden is an L shape and we wondered if our neighbours would sell us the corner of their garden (where the tree is) to make it so that we could see to the end of our garden so kids would play at the bottom and we could still see them (cutting out the corner roughly 2 fence panels which is currently where the stump of the large tree is, the stump is so big that it is almost 2 fence panels in diameter)
We sent our neighbours a message and said that we wondered if they would consider selling us this small corner (their garden is also 1/2 an acre so as you can imagine this corner is a small piece of their garden), if so we would pay for the tree entirely (as it would become ours) as well as legal fees etc and also a new fence as the fence is broken and had to be pulled down to cut the tree. The fence is their fence as it’s on their right hand side. We did say regardless of this we would contribute to the tree.
The tree felling was brought forward as they had space and so it’s now been cut down, it took 5 days and considerably caused chaos to our garden as it was all done from our side, there’s a giant dent in our garden where the tree was felled, it also caused damage to our driveway as heavy machinery had to come in and out and it’s covered in wood chip and pieces of wood etc. We didn’t say anything as needed to be done obviously and not the biggest deal until the next message!
We got a reply saying they didn’t want to sell the land (fair enough no big deal) but that they wanted us to go 50/50 on the tree and the fence as we were the ones who wanted it cut down.
This I suppose is true but it was to stop dangerous branches falling? What were we supposed to do?
Total cost with fence for 50/50 would be £5000, and we’ve already spent £1000 on having it cut back so the kids could play out for some of summer.
What would you do? Obviously we have the money as we would have spent it buying the land but we feel that that’s too much on the principal that it’s their tree and fence and we’ve had the inconvenience of it all?
thanks for reading!
YABU - you owe 50/50
YANBU - you owe lews