Q We moved into our home a few years ago, buying the property from an elderly woman. She was clearly in the first stages of dementia and her relatives managed the sale for her to move into a home. As we’ve come to decorate the property, it’s been clear that work she has paid for looks good from the outside but closer inspection sees corners cut and poor workmanship. We thought that was the extent of her being taken advantage of until my partner was invited into our neighbours’ garden. Here they actually have the original fence posts that are, in places, a foot or more away from the current fence dividing our gardens. They had replaced the fence (it’s their side) a year or so before we moved in. When my partner pointed it out, the owner muttered something about the elderly woman being fine with the line of the fence. We, however, are not.
This “land grab” has not been registered with the Land Registry and there was no exchange of money for land recorded at the sale. So there’s been no legal transfer of ownership, just more people taking advantage of an elderly woman.
What are our rights here? Is there anything we can do and what if our neighbours put their house up for sale; can we challenge the boundary? We’d obviously like the original fence line restored.
AN
A I don’t think it’s helpful to refer to the change in the line of the fence as a “land grab” or to accuse your neighbours of “taking advantage of an elderly woman”. It could be that your neighbours are as cheesed off as you are. If a contractor had put up a new fence in a not very straight line – judging by your description – and had left the old fence posts looking messy in front of it in my garden, I know that I would not have been pleased.
Perhaps your neighbours would warm to a suggestion of having the fence redone back to where it should be and the eyesore original fence posts removed. You could make such a suggestion more attractive by offering to pay half the costs. If your neighbours are amenable to the idea, you may also want to draw up a boundary agreement with them once the work is done so that it is crystal clear where the boundary lies and who is responsible for maintenance work and so on.
If you and your neighbours can’t agree on the next steps, you could try using the Boundary Disputes Mediation Service offered by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which can cost upwards of £4,420 (including VAT). But that is likely to be a lot cheaper than taking your neighbours to court and would avoid never being invited round to their garden ever again.