I inherited a tiny cottage in the countryside after both my parents died five years ago worth only £115k in poor condition without even central heating.
This had always been my place of respite and somewhere i enjoyed throughout my childhood and now sharing with my DH and child. It holds special memories of my childhood and my parents too.
All was fine until a new neighbour purchased the cottage next to us late 2020. We did not meet until spring 2021 due to Covid. We experienced this neighbour as a bit abrupt but were determined to get on. Roll forward a year and this neighbour has made our lives a nightmare. She's made multiple assertions about her rights on our land (she has a right of entry/exit across our land only) states that we have harassed her, has threatened to take our land, cut off access to a shared septic tank and threatened our contractors working on our land. After a couple of months of attempting to communicate via email she told us to speak via lawyers only. We then spent thousands in legal correspondence but she was never able to back up her claims. We stated this multiple times and it was clear we were in the right, morally ethically and legally. We even offered to sell her some of our land but she did not engage. We stopped legal correspondence in February on the basis that it was getting is nowhere. Since then she has been emailing repeatedly copying in neighbours and local people essentially trying to win the "court of public opinion" by making up crap about us and taking pieces of legal correspondence manipulating the information and sending it to others. Prior to this we had good relationships with local people but have felt uncomfortable since. Whilst some are still pleasant to us, some state they feel stuck in the middle and no one will challenge her and we have been told that they essentially fear her - they are happy to stand by and watch us be attacked so they are not attacked.
We have spoken to the police and they state that it's a civil matter not criminal, that although her emails are unpleasant that as she has not damaged our land or physically assaulted us there is nothing they can do.
In the last day alone since we've been here she has sent 3 emails to all and sundry - we ignore them all but don't block her as she incriminates herself by email so we save it all up as evidence we could potentially use against her later. We continue to speak to our lawyers for guidance but want to keep our costs down. Their advice is consistent to not respond and state that we feel harassed and bullied which feels contrary to me. They advise we hold it all back for court but I really don't want this to end in court.
It's very hard to see how and if this will ever end. It's depressing. In a recent email to all she said we will never be able to sell the cottage as we'd have to disclose the dispute. She's right. She also took a personal injury claim out against us which is being dealt with my our insurers fraud team. In our opinion she clearly has some kind of mental health problem and is fixated on us. She has stated more than once "we're not from around here" and has an issue with us having a second home.
It seems that all she wants to do is fight us about anything. I really can't take it anymore. Neither the police or lawyers can help.
What are we supposed to do? Have any of you ever dealt with something like this before?