Video Summary

How can I stop my neighbor from letting their dog use my yard as a bathroom? Well, I’m afraid I don’t have very good answers for that. I don’t think you really have a viable legal question, and there’s not always a legal answer to a problem. Technically, the dog or the neighbor allowing the dog to come onto your property could be considered trespass, but that’s going to be tough. You don’t want to go to court over a trespass case as far as a dog’s concerned, and then also them not being a good neighbor and policing up after the dog, which probably you wouldn’t mind so much as long as they policed up after the dog.

It falls into one of those categories where it’s just not very considerate, I guess bad manners or whatever, and so you just might suggest, if you see the neighbor, just ask them if you, “Please police up after your dog.” Of course, you may not see it. You just see the results of the latest walk rather than see them right in the actual act or not. There really isn’t a good legal answer to that, and just something that people should be more considerate of their neighbors and police up after their dogs as far as that’s concerned.

I always try whenever we have a problem such as this, is talk about practical solutions to it. I don’t know if you could put up a small picket fence or something, a decorative picket fence in the front. I don’t know if you have a sidewalk or whatever to keep just a decorative small fence, and hopefully the neighbor wouldn’t have the dog jump a small one-foot decorative fence or whatever, as far as that’s concerned. I really don’t have a legal solution to that.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we have a wise enough man since King Solomon to come up with the answer to that problem, a solution, but the only thing I could suggest is if you see them out there, suggest they don’t do it, which is very difficult, or maybe put up some kind of little decorative fence just as a practical matter, make it a little more inconvenient so that the dog would not be so inclined to use your property, but he moves next door and uses your neighbor’s property for whatever uses he needs to take or whatever urges come upon him during his neighbor’s walk.

Of course, if they’re not even walking him and they’re just running wild, well, I guess you can call animal control to say that they’ve got an unleashed dog, but again, that’s not real practical since animal control by the time they get out there the dog’s gone and there’s not a lot you can do about it. I’m willing to talk to you, but I don’t have any answer. You can call and talk to me about the neighbor’s dog at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

How do I go about modifying my property line? Well, you do that very carefully and with a lot of cooperation from the neighbor who is adjoining your property. The first step as far as modifying your property line is to establish, as far as the survey is concerned and have your surveyor come out and survey and monument where your property line may be. Then, if you have fences or your neighbor has fences or there’s some other reason that you need to modify the property line. Then you need to have the surveyor provide a legal description for the property in question that you wish to expand your property line on. or decrease it and show where that line will be and a legal description for the property on where it will be situated.

Once you have that done, you then need to approach the property owner who is adjacent, who owns this property that you wish to modify and ask them if they would be willing to sign a deed to the property in question. If they are or if you have to persuade them with money, whatever the situation is, then you get with them and show them the survey. If they’re in agreement, we then have your neighbor sign a deed for the property in question.

That’s how you modify your property line. You use surveys, you need the cooperation of your neighbor who owns the property. You need to be careful if it’s a small or [plaided 00:01:56] lot because you don’t want to make their property too small for land use purposes or future land use purposes. You need to look out for subdividing property as far as whatever county you’re in and any subdivision ordinances. It needs to be done with doing some due diligence.

Usually it’s more of a dispute over the surveys involved rather than modifying it. It is determining where the boundary line is and certainly, if there’s any encroachment such as fences or even buildings, how do you resolve that? That’s when you get into modifying the boundary line and hopefully you can get that accomplished through some sort of agreement. If not, then you may need to see an attorney to establish what the boundary line is. If there are any encroachments or fences that can’t be handled through cooperation of the parties or self help, you may need to pay an attorney to see about taking care of the encroachment or to actually establish where the boundary line is situated.

Surveys are great whenever you purchase property. Many people don’t do that if they’re paying cash for it, but a survey, when you buy a property is great so it shows whether or not there’s any encroachments, any fences. I would encourage you that if you are going to buy a property, get the existing survey or order a new survey so you can see where your neighbor’s fence is or the buildings and you know, before you buy the property, whether or not there’s a dispute as far as the boundary line is concerned.

Have your title insurance ensure that there are no facts that an accurate survey would disclose and they can delete that exception. If you have a boundary line issue, they can really get nasty, but give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

Am I allowed to trim my neighbor’s tree that hangs over the property line? The answer to the question is yes, you own from your property line to the center of the earth to the heavens, and so if your neighbor’s limbs or tree hangs over your property line, well, yes you can. Now the only caveat to that is that you can’t go over on his property to do the trimming, because that would be trespassing, but as long as you can trim it in your side of the fence, or your side of the property line, well, that works just fine. The question I get most of the time, however, is not that whether or not you can trim the tree, is whether or not you can make your neighbor trim his tree that’s hanging over your property line and dropping leaves or pine needles, or debris on your pool enclosure, or on your lot, or gets overgrown, and is sort of impairing your use of your property?

I have a standard response to either of these questions, which sometimes begs the question is, is I suggest you maybe talk to your neighbor about it, and ask him if he wouldn’t mind trimming the tree, or taking care of this, because of your problem. Well, usually when I give that sage advice is, “I’ve been there and done that. Unfortunately the neighbor is not very receptive,” and I clean that up substantially, as far as that suggestion is concerned, and has pretty well told me to take a long walk off a short pier, and so we don’t, we’re not making much progress. I tell them, “Well, you’re not in a position to do much other than take care of the problem yourself.” If they had bushes or whatever, you might let them know that whenever you do the trimming, it isn’t pretty, so that they just need to be aware.

If they want to take care of it, fine, but if you have to do it at your expense, well, it’s going to be fairly efficient as far as that concern. They say, “Well, can I sue him or whatever?” The answer to that is is, “Well, yes, but that’s not a very practical remedy, and that landscape guys are a lot cheaper than lawyers, so you could possibly sue your neighbor for nuisance if this continues to drop debris on your side of the property, but by the time you got done doing that with the lawyer, well, you could have probably had a lifetime of maintenance as far as cleaning the property up, and taking care of a matter yourself.”

One other thing as far as trees are concerned is what happens if your neighbor has a tree on his property, storm comes along, blows the tree over onto your property, or it blows it over on your house, or damages your property? Is the neighbor liable? The answer is no, he isn’t liable because it’s an act of God, and so you have to rely upon your own insurance, and oh, by the way, the insurance company isn’t going to pay to have a two year old oak tree hauled out of your back yard, so it’s always good to have good relationship with your neighbor, if that’s at all possible. Now there is an exception to the tree blowing over, is if the tree is diseased or it’s rotted or decayed, you need to put your neighbor on notice if he’s not taking care of matters.

Let him know that he’s being negligent and not maintaining the tree, and if it does blow over on your property, that he will be responsible for your damages, so you would have a cause of action against him for your expenses, which would probably in small claims, up to $5,000, but you should send him a little letter or a notice that’s saying, “Look, you need to take care of that tree. It’s dead. We have a bad windstorm, I’m concerned it’ll blow over on my property, and damage my house, or cause me to have to clean up, and so we’ll look to you to take care of the matter.” Hopefully, you don’t have any problems with your neighbor. Probably you don’t have a good legal solution, but if you do have some questions about real property, give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

Do contractors have a liability or an obligation to complete their work within a certain time period? We direct you to whatever contract you entered into with the contractor. Most contracts are fairly open-ended … although, the answer to it is, the contract would dictate it. They cannot just drag it on forever. If that’s the case, where they’re not doing it in a timely fashion, or, you haven’t seen them, or they haven’t showed up for 30 days, it could be considered that they have abandoned the job.

You can then notify them that they have a certain amount of time in which to complete the job, or else you’re going to terminate their services and retain the services of someone else to complete the job. That way you would hold them responsible for whatever the cost would be that you had to pay over and above the contract amount. When they’re supposed to perform is dictated by a contract.

My experience has been it’s very difficult to get a contractor to agree to a certain time period, and have them put in there … or, furthermore, even if you do have a time period, or a time when they’re supposed to have it done subject to rain delays and acts of God or hurricanes, or whatever, there’s no penalty if they run over. You don’t want to have to fire them or whatever as far as that’s concerned so you almost get in a desperate situation.

In my career it’s been very few times that I’ve been able to put in a contract between an individual and a contractor that there’s penalty, of, say, $100 a day for every day that they don’t have the job done, that they agree to pay. I have had some contractors say, “Well, if … I’ll tell you what. We’ll give you that penalty clause in there that’s $100 day for every day past this, but, you also have to give us a bonus for $100 day for every day that we get it done before the deadline.”

It’s very difficult to negotiate a penalty. Most contracts should or do have some sort of time period. If you’re dealing with work orders or something, or an insurance company is hiring the contractor, that’s difficult, because you can’t, then, terminate them or fire them because you’re not the one that contracted them to do the services.

If they’ve abandoned the job or haven’t shown up for thirty days, I think that you probably have reason to demand or terminate their contract for … abandoned the job and hire a new contractor. Of course there’s economics of all involved with that. It may cost you more to get it done, and the contractor may not be solvent, or, you may not want to spend the money on a lawyer to try and recover the additional costs.

If you have some questions, I don’t know that I can answer them for you, as far as when do they have to have it done? Give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

What are my options if my neighbor plants a garden or erects a fence on my property? Well, I get this question asked any number of times primarily as it relates to fences. The first thing that you would need to be very sure of is obtaining a survey, so you know precisely where your boundary line is, so there’s no question about that. Particularly as it relates to fences that shows that the fence or whatever, or garden for that matter, is in fact on your property. Once you know that it’s on your property, then I suggest that you contact your neighbor by written notice, or a nice letter, and say, “Enclosed is a copy of a survey, which shows that you have your fence on my property or your garden, and I would give you permission to relocate your fence onto your property, and to remove your garden from my property. I’d appreciate hearing from you in the next ten days.”

Sometimes I am engaged to send that letter out, particularly if there is a little bad blood between you and the neighbor, but it’s something that certainly you can do. You first try and do it by getting the neighbor to understand what the boundary line is. Now if the neighbor does not remove the fence or relocate the fence or remove the garden, then I would send the next letter is is saying that, “I haven’t heard from you about relocating the fence or relocating your garden. If it is not relocated in the next ten days, or whatever period of time you wish to give them, I am going to remove your fence from my property and lay it onto your property, and also remove your garden from my property.” You send them that letter. If that doesn’t … They don’t do anything, you can then proceed to remove any encroachments from your property.

Fences are particularly a hot point, as long as there’s no breach the peace. If someone comes out there and the neighbor starts shooting at you or comes out and confronts you or wants to fight or whatever, then probably the best thing to do is to call the police. Show the police your survey, and say, “I’ve asked this … My neighbor to relocate his fence a couple of times. He’s refused. I told him I want to relocate it. I’m not going on his property, and he’s out here giving me a bad time.” The officer will usually say, “Send everybody home.” Say, “Well, it’s a civil matter.” If it escalates to the point where you’re unable to remove the encroachment from your property, and you have to hire a Lawyer to do that, of course, it starts getting very expensive at that point. Then we could file what they call an Ejectment Action. That’s wherein you state that this is your boundary line. You own the property, and that you’re asking the neighbor, asking the Court to direct the neighbor to remove these encroachments from your property.

The answer to your question is you have a self-help remedy for these encroachments, and as long as there’s no breach the peace. Then if that doesn’t work and you do need to hire a Lawyer, well then he can file what they call an Ejectment Action. Unfortunately, those get a little bit expensive. If you have any problems, hopefully you can get it worked out with your neighbor, but the first thing to do is get you a survey. Yes, that does cost you some money that shows where these encroachments are on your property, and then see if you can’t get it worked out with your neighbor, as far as removing those encroachments without having a confrontation or having to spend a lot of money with an Attorney.

If you have any problems or questions about that, give me a call at 727-847-2288.