Boundary dispute-liability for legal fees

[Joe1977]

Please bear with me, it's a bit of a long one!

We brought a property 12 months ago which we knew had an ongoing boundary dispute. The garden is large and the area involved doesn't affect our access to the property or the utilities to the property (gas, water etc). We took the attitude that we couldn't care less whether the garden fence was moved a couple of metres as long as there was good reason for doing so.

Last September we had a site visit with the owner of the adjoining land and surveyors for us and him. It was agreed that the position of the boundary fence was incorrect when compared against historical land registry data. We agreed that we would sort out a correct surveyors plans for submission to the land registry and move the fence at the first available opportunity. He made a parting comment following this meeting that he would be seeking recompense for his expenses incurred. My husband didn't respond to this comment and thought we would wait and see what transpired.

This morning our solicitor sent us a letter she had received from the other side regarding expenses incurred. We appreciate that our garden encroaches on his land and that, as we own the property, are in the 'wrong'. I have discussed this at length with DH and we are happy to pay his expenses from the point at which we took ownership of the property, but he has put in a claim for his expenses incurred whilst failing to resolve the dispute with the previous owner.

My question, eventually, is what is the legal precendent in such cases? Are we liable for his legal costs incurred prior to us taking ownership of the property? Obviously I will discuss with our solicitor on Monday, but was just wondering if anyone else had been in the same boat.

Thanks for reading!!!

I would suggest that you cannot be held responsible for any fees incurred prior to your knowledge of why they were incurred. I would have thought that your solicitor, when you bought, should have sought some sort of indemnity from the previous owners as you were obviously all aware that there was an ongoing dispute. Did this not happen?

What basis did you agree with your vendor to deal with this ? Have you inherited the terms they had agreed ? I'm surprised your solictor allowed you to proceed with this ongoing tbh and wonder if an indemnity would even have been an option as the dispute already existed.

We suggested this to our solicitor, as the previous owner offered to come back and move the boundary if needed, and to be liable for legal fees. We were told by our solicitor that this would in effect be a 'gentlemans agreement' and would not have any legal standing. Interestingly, she has since 'left' the firm that we used and our file is now being dealt with by one of the partners of the firm!

The vendor was not in agreement with the neighbour and was challenging his claims. Hence the high legal bill from the other side!!!

Off to cook tea now, will check thread again later.

Bumping thread to see if anyone is around this evening that has any thoughts on this.

have you or the solicitor contacted your vendor yet?

Not yet, about to write my email response to our solicitor so she's got it first thing tomorrow. Will then have a chat with her to see how she suggests proceeding.

Have been thinking about this since yesterday and I've come to the conclusion that it probably is our responsibility to pay up. It's then up to us if we chase the vendor to see if he will reinburse us.

Thankyou

Wow, Joe, you seem to have a very relaxed attitude. There have (honestly) been murders about this sort of dispute and legal bills running to six figures. Good on you.

Life's too short to let things like this get in the way of enjoying it!!! It helps to try and find the silver lining, in this case, taking the boundary fence down will give us a good opportunity to landscape the garden!

I would have thought you might have a claim against the solicitor for negligence - if you can't get the vendor to cough up, go after the lawyers...

£6500 so far (approximately £1000 of which has been incurred since we purchased the property), I spoke with my solicitor yesterday and she is going to request further information before we make any commitment regarding contributing towards the 'reasonable expenses' of the other side.

Have been thinking about this lots since I posted the original thread. DH and I have pretty much decided that as long as all the expenses can be justified we are going to pay up, get the boundary sorted and then decide after that whether we'll chase the vendor for anything.

We have had a similar-ish situation (not a boundary dispute, but something the council could have come after as about which the vendors had done.) Our conveyancing costs went up as the solicitor had to do extra work to make sure we were covered - some kind of insurance that the vendors had to pay for. They weren't happy about it, but we wouldn't have bought the house without it.

I think your issue here is with your solicitor, not the vendor.