Fencing with the Neighbors
Good fences make good neighbors. Bad
fences, on the other hand...
I live in a neighborhood where everyone has boundary fences, and
most of them were built thirty years ago when the housing
development was new. As you can imagine, a thirty year old wooden
fence has long outlived its intended structural life, but none of
the neighbors really want to deal with fixing them.
Yesterday, one of my neighbors came over to hammer violently on my
door. Apparently, some of the rotten wooden pickets between our
yards had given way, and Glindy, Spencer, and Benny were running
around exploring my neighbor's back yard.
The good news is that the dogs all came when I called, and the
neighbor nailed the rotten wooden pickets back in place. The bad
news is that this neighbor is terrified of dogs, especially dogs
Glindy's size. So, needless to say, we need to take steps to ensure
this doesn't happen again.
This, of course, raises all kinds of problems. Boundary fences--and
dogs--make for a few weird points of law. By law, I'm required to
"contain my dogs." But my neighbors and I are equally required to
maintain, repair, and replace common fencing. Since we own the
fence in common, I can't simply take unilateral action except in
very certain circumstances.
In practice, what this means is that my neighbors are all likely to
try to shift the entire burden of repairing this ancient and
dilapidated fence onto me, all the while trying to tell me what
kind of fence I can replace it with, and what materials will meet
their personal stylistic approval.
This is further complicated by the fact that I have four neighbors
who share this boundary fence. Getting five households to agree to
anything, much less agreeing to split costs fairly, is going to be
a challenge.
I have to fix the fence in short order, whether my neighbors
cooperate or not. So, I'm hitting the law books. If necessary, I'll
fix the fence and then sue my neighbors to recover their part of
the costs. I just think it would be so much nicer if they lived up
to their responsibilities as well, instead of laying it all on me
simply because I have dogs. *sigh*