Any solicitors to help? Neighbour with trespassing drain issue

[Rivkah2018]

Hi,
We moved into our house 2.5 years ago and quickly realised the neighbours were bullies so we avoided them. When they found out I was pregnant they decided to start legal proceedings. Since my baby was born we've been battling with their solicitor over a right of way and a trespassing drain.

The houses used to be one, and were split in 1999 and sold onwards. Our property didn't have access to the sewer, so a drain takes waste from our property into their cellar across their home and joins their toilet drain. That drain has a right of way to join the neighbouring property. We have this expresses right to join existing draining in our deeds, but their solicitor is saying the right of way was never granted by their house and therefore is a trespass. Our conveyancing solicitor is being cagey and not going me our file.

I cant afford a solicitor with a baby... Any advice would be so gratefully received please.

If your conveyancing solicitor is not giving you the file you should make a complaint to the senior partner. Take the file and the deeds to another firm and get a fresh opinion.

Do you have legal insurance on your house insurance? This is just the sort of thing that it's excellent for... and you're already paying for it through your insurance - so effectively it feels free (at least it's no new money needed now!)

What difference does it make to them? Are they negatively affected? It's not an issue of you having to go into their garden or property so if this ended up in a court, would any judge ever make you change it.

They are vile people. I'm so sorry.

Thank you all for replying. I'm all out of ideas and it's just good to hear other opinions on the matter.

Basically, we have legal insurance but when we put in a claim in January we were denied as they said they do not defend cases. The neighbours' solicitors were putting 7 day deadlines etc for responses and actions (there is more to the dispute than just the drain!), so we sought legal advice. We ended up spending £2000 only for them to write back and forth to the home insurance who still refused us. So our legal insurance doesnt help us.

Re the Conveyancing solicitor. We asked for the file in Jan, and they referred us to a senior partner who said it was an odd request and that he would help clarify things. And he has ignore my requests for my file. He just doesn't respond to those emails.

I just don't know what to do. If we do have a trespassing drain I think the conveyancing firm should pay for it to be rerouted since they should have seen that when selling us the property, right?

The neighbours last correspondence said they are talking to the water company to ask to disconnect the drain running through their house. Which would mean we wouldn't be able to use our water/bathrooms etc.

They are just very angry people and are out to hurt us. We've always stayed out of their way and this is very stressful.

Any advice will be gratefully received. Thank you

A request to see your file is not odd. Their response is odd. I’d give them until 4pm Friday to confirm they will release your file. Tell them this is a formal complaint. You’ll have to go through their complaints process, which they should write to you about, but if after that they still won’t let you have the whole file you should complain to the SRA.

Do you have a mortgage?

@collaborate thank you. I will do that re complaints procedure.

@dropdeadfredra yes I do have a mortgage.

Who did the conversion from one house to two? Can you contact them?

#NotALawyer, but you might speak to the local authority (presumably env. health or building control) if your twat of a neighbour looks like carrying out their threat to disconnect you from drains. Section 17 of the Public Health Act 1961 gives the LA the powers to remedy drains that are ‘stopped up’, because leaving a home without drainage is (obviously) a public health issue.

to you, OP.

@rosielily the houses were split almost 20years ago, and the company that split them doesn't seem to exist anymore. Regardless, they are saying our deeds don't show a right of way. Can anyone make sense of that?
If my deed says " Right of way to use existing drainage" but they say the agreement is in our charges but only for the house that connects to the sewer (3 houses down), not their house next door.

@urbanesprawl thank you. That's a good idea. I will let them know.

It's stressful enough having a baby... This is just a bit much on top of it!
Thank you all for responding.

Your solicitors are acting really inappropriately. You can call the Solicitors Regulatory Authority for free to get advice on how to deal with them.

In terms of dealing with your neighbours, try a CAB office or google pro bono legal help in your area - you might find a group who could help you.

You should get your deeds from the land registry. It is highly unlikely to list all of the services that you can benefit from. Much more likely is a provision that you are granted the benefit of all easements and quasi-easements - which basically means that you have the right to continue all existing service passing through the other part of the property.

I've got copies of the deed from the Land registry. They are pretty complex because the properties used to be one house, and are very old (grade II listed).
I can't really complain about the solicitors yet since they are the only professionals helping interpret the deeds, albeit in a not so clear way. They also just stated that we don't own part of the house that we thought we did on purchase, so they have clearly made mistakes.
Do you think the solicitors would pay for rerouting the waste pipe if they failed to tell us about a trespassing drain?

Is there anything there, under a paragraph perhaps headed "excepted an reserved", that mentions quasi easements?

Can you get squatters rights (sorry no idea what the technical term is!) for something like this if they have been going that way for so long?

Does the drain on their cellar drain only your property? Or does it take flow from other properties?

If the house has been split for 20 years I don't think your neighbours can do anything about it. I think you will gave aquired a right to access the sewers via their drain.

Hold up a sec. you’ve just discovered you don’t own a part of the property that the solicitors who did your conveyancing gave you to believe that you did own ? And that includes sewerage etc rights across angry neighbour’s land? It sounds to me as though your argument is with the solicitor, not the neighbour.