So it's all kicked off here over a fence

[SleepFreeZone]

I did start a thread about three weeks ago re. my neighbour at the back lifting her fence panels and helping herself to our garden. Trimming back our trees and shouting and screaming at us while standing in our garden.

We decided we were going to erect a fence in our garden, inside of her open trellis fence as we wanted privacy and to obviously prevent her accessing our land. The fence is half up, contractor gone home for the day, and she has appeared on the doorstep shouting and bawling. She is claiming the fence is on her land and she has the legal right to take it down. We looked at the deeds before the fence was erected and could see that her fence was off the boundary line into our garden. So actually should be about 3 inches more into her garden, so she is clearly not right and DP is going to have to go round there later with the deeds. BUT it has made me 🙄 that this could easily spiral into solicitors and court cases and I'm very keen to not go down that road. I have s feeling she is going to get someone to remove the fence and thus cause us to have to sue her. Whereas I feel calmer if she instructs solicitors to get us to remove the fence as we can then represent ourselves in court and hopefully avoid thousands of pounds of costs.

Grrr I hate this shit and I see it all the time on TV and think these people are idiots.

You little tease OP.

marking place just inside the boundary

Well we did as we said we would. The fencer came back yesterday and moved the posts in so it was further into our garden. She had trespassed once again into our garden on the Thursday and placed a rope around the fence to try and tell us where the fence should be relocated to.

DP was out there instructing him in the day and together the fence was put up and finished. I went up there about 8pm to water the plants in the greenhouse and noticed the end label was laying in the garden. I assumed the fencer hadn't put the last panel in or even that the wind might have knocked it down!! I go back to the house to tell DP that something's weird was going on, we tried to put the fence panel back in ourselves but he started to walk back to the garage to get a ladder and as I look up she appears against the trellis like Jack Nicholson in The Shining 😲 Spittle spraying from her mouth and screaming the fence was still in her land, she'd removed the bloody panel!! The concrete wasn't even dry and she was dismantling the bloody fence.

So I am so totally totally incensed I just screamed and screamed back at her. DP is on the phone to the police and because they can hear everything's going on in the back ground they blue light two police cars over to the house straight away. The police talk to us for about half an hour and then were over at hers for nearly an hour. She wouldnt accept she was wrong, would only just about accept it was criminal damage after they repeated themselves again and again and has basically refused to let it drop. So it seems like she has agreed to stop dismantling the fence but we are now anticipating a court case.

Crazy crazy situation but we just couldn't stop the madness escalating no matter how much we bent over backwards for her. She has got her own way with the trees she wanted lopping/ removing - that will be happening after bird nesting season. We paid an extra £100 for the fencer to move the panels in further, and yet here we are. You cannot reason with unreasonable people.

*panel

Diagram!!!!!

She is unhinged...can't understand why the original fence isn't on the boundary - who does that?

Wow she is officially bonkers.

Do nothing now. Wait for her to start with the bat shit court case. Phone and maybe report it to the house insurance company and ask their advice.

Does she live alone? Does she have family you can speak to? She sounds unhinged.

Blimey. What a nut job! Well done for calling the police.

Do see if you have anything with your house insurance.
Let her waste her own money pursuing this. It's not really about the fence anyway - it's a control thing.
If she kicks off call the police again - they'll know all about her now!

Good grief what a pillock xx

I have dealt with people like this.

What you need is a distraction - something to attract the Eye of Sauron.

Do you know anyone with a big horrible van they wouldn't mind parking right outside her front window for a week or so? Anything else you can think of?

Mouse infestation?

This isn't about your fence per se - it's about the view from her precious patio.

Ha ha I did take photos in the other thread. I daren't now though as I suspect we shall be off to court. I just don't trust her not to try and damage the fence over time. I suspect if everyday she pushed against it, over time she could make it unstable and of course then she would be right that when we get high winds in the winter the fence could fall down. She will basically do anything to make the fence disappear, and she's do sneaky that I can imagine any sorts of underhanded antics.

We have approached our legal cover through the house insurance and they are sending the forms out. She has a job that requires a clean DBS check, she can't be getting herself a police caution and yet she was still apparently arguing with the police that they were wrong and she was right!

The police were as perplexed as we were.

Good grief!

So both fences are on your property?

I would have looked into putting mine where the original was and telling her to put her own up on her own property!

I wouldn't have conceded any of my land.

I can't see why you think someone who behaves in the way she does will take you to court or go through legal channels?

I wouldnt have moved it an inch for her. She will take a mile everytime.

If you go by the standard info that comes with the deeds of house it looks as though her fence runs along the boundary pretty closely. HOWEVER she has been here donkeys years and says that the original fence was a foot into our garden (I have no idea what happened to that fence) and she chose to erected her fence one foot in from that fence so she could own both sides of it and we (or anyone) couldn't touch her fence.

So she thinks our fence should be at least a foot inside her fence. We can sort of see the line where the old fence ran (there are a few old brackets in the ground) and are fencer has followed that line as best he could working around big tree roots.

That sounds so stressful. No more concessions. She will claim your land if you go further inside your boundary.

The thing is we didn't want a dispute situation as it knocks value off your house. So we were trying very hard to appease her whist still desperately trying to regain some privacy and stop her accessing her garden.

We know it's likely to go a legal route now as her husband pretty much said that to the policeman.

Oh my goodness she sounds like a complete nutter, you poor things! I'd not bother talking to her but make sure you document everything to do with the fence in writing so she can't claim she wasn't made aware of things.

Don't worry about the court case. It is her money she will be wasting.

Try to laugh about it. Check the fence periodically if it is becoming loose and make minor repairs. Stay calm and roll your eyes metaphorically.

The police were totally amazing though. Felt totally embarrassed ringing them but they handled it so well and basically said she tried to demand that they tell us to remove the panels and just leave the posts in situ. They declined that compromise and told her to leave the panels in place as opening the gardens up again to each other were going to lead to further confrontation and that they had no reason to speak to us further. If anything else happens he said we were to ring 999!

She's a raving loon and that will be obvious to everyone. Good job you have legal cover on the insurance - make full use of it! And call the police if any further damage is done, she clearly isn't going to listen to you and your DP.

You cannot reason with her so stop trying. She will not take you to court and I even doubt she will instruct solicitors. However, a solicitor can only go on what she tells them. Many years ago we had a bat shit woman next door who went to solicitors saying we had built on her land. Both solicitors had to come out and look at the boundary and were speechless to find it was built 3 ft onto our own garden. She had to pay, but I didn't because I worked for my solicitor at the time.

This demonstrates the denial and madness of some people. You have got one of them for a ndn I am afraid. She is screaming because she cannot get her own way and knows she is wrong and in the past it has resulted in her getting her own way.

Personally I would not have moved the boundary, but I can absolutely see you were trying to keep the peace. Please don't worry about court. The only court case will be a criminal one with her as the defendant.