Border dispute

[crazyswede]

Asking for a friend - really, I am ! My friends first language is not English, this is why I am asking for help, so that I can understand the law a bit in order to explain to him what questions he might be asking of his solicitor. I cannot go with him to see his solicitor because we don’t live anywhere near each other.

What’s has happened so far…

Friend moved into a property over 30 years ago. The property is owned outright.

Friend knows which fence he has to maintain, he has it marked on the deeds.

Some 11-12 years ago, the existing fence was in a bad state of repair, and my friend replaced it. The rotten wooden posts were removed, and replaced with concrete ones in the same holes, and new fencing of the same height was erected.

The neighbour, a great friend, asked if the end panel might be moved over a bit in his favour, to allow him a bit of extra room for a garden plant in the corner of his property (only about a foot). My friend agreed, since the two were friends, and tacked the last fence panel to his shed instead of the end fence pole, giving the neighbour the extra “triangle” bit of land. This had the effect of making the hitherto straight fence “go in” slightly to my friends garden, if that makes sense.

Nothing more was said about the fence for years, until this year.

Out of the blue, the friends middle aged daughter (who does not live at the property) and her boyfriend of many years ( the elderly neighbour has said many times in the past that he is frightened of his common law son in law), asked my friend to move ALL of the fence in their favour. Bear in mind, it’s positioned exactly where it’s been for the last 30 plus years, save for the end panel which was moved 10 or 11 years ago slightly in her fathers favour. The next thing was a solicitors letter from the daughter to my friend, demanding it be moved, but with no supporting evidence as to why or how much.
Moreover, they are saying that my friends shed should also be moved as it is in their garden ! The shed is standing on my friends patio, which was there when he bought the house! and has always been on his own property.

If the neighbours daughter has an argument at all, it can surely only be over the thickness of the line drawn on the original plans and how that might translate to measurements on the actual ground, since the plans match the current fence position, save for the last panel as explained above. To my friends knowledge, the original fence when he moved in, was the first fence ever erected there when the property was first built.

My friend engaged a solicitor and furnished the solicitor with the deeds, measurements and photographs etc, and the solicitor has been trying for many months to get the situation resolved. However, the neighbours daughter always asks for more time to provide her evidence and the matter drags on, and costs escalate. My friend cannot imagine that the neighbours daughter can win, since the “new” fence is in the same position as the old (save for last panel).

The questions I am asking are so that I can hopefully explain to my friend what he needs to ask his solicitor……, since I am not entirely certain that his English has so far been good enough to convey the situation to his solicitor .

1. The daughter doesn’t live with her father. The paperwork coming from her solicitor is in her name and actually mentions the property belongs to her father. There is no mention of an LPA (Lasting Power of Attorney) being in place. Can the daughter therefore sue my friend over a boundary dispute that technically isn’t her dispute?
2. Following on from question one, if she produces an LPA, does she have to start the procedure off again or can she introduce proof of LPA now?
3. If she has LPA, nothwithstanding the fact that the fence hasn’t been moved in over 30 years, and in fact probably NEVER been moved (save for the last panel), can she lawfully make her dad potentially out of pocket financially by pursuing this matter.
4. If she has LPA, can she act in a way that would be out of character for her elderly father, bearing in mind that he was best friends with my friend for decades, right up until COVID. During covid, the neighbour became isolated (high risk because of past health issues), and seems to have been cut off from everyone except for the daughter and her middle aged biker boyfriend.

There is a consensus amongst other neighbours and my friend, that the elderly father may be suffering from dementia now, hence the thought that an LPA might be in place. He would never have argued with my friend like the daughter and her boyfriend are, especially over something as petty as a few inches (quite literally) of garden. They were literally best friends, spend Christmas’ together sometimes, went shopping together, swapped garden plants, the neighbour bought my friends grandchildren sweets every week for when they visited……and now this!

It should be noted that the daughters boyfriend is and always has been very intimidating. I know that in itself isn’t relevant, but I am personally tempted to think that they are just doing all of this to upset my friend. The elderly father has said before that he is scared of the son in law, who revs his motorbikes extra loud, annoying all the neighbours, parks his car on the road outside and purposely blocks my friend and other neighbours in, literally parking within a centimetre of their cars so they have to go and ask him to move, yet there’s plenty of space for everyone to park sensibly.

The elderly neighbour has only been seen a few times over the garden fence since covid, and appears not to have knowledge of any of this dispute.

[atticus]

Your friend's solicitor is probably already doing most if not all of this.

He/she will start with the letters from the other party's solicitor, analysing what is claimed and the reasons given.

What is the claimant's standing in this (you speculate about an LPA - I would ask the other party's solicitor all the appropriate questions that arise from your points 1 to 4).

Then the available documents - Land Registry titles for both properties, any correspondence or written agreements.

Your friend could gather any other evidence. For example, does he have photographs showing the fence in its original position?


Your post suggests that it is the other party that is having difficulty answering some pertinent questions.

[crazyswede]

Thank you for your prompt answer.

The main issue is that I haven’t seen the correspondence from the solicitor so far…..And I don’t have sufficient understanding of the law to be able to explain to my foreign friend the importance of asking the right questions. It seems if nothing else that you have agreed that the questions that I would personally have been asking, if it was me in this position, are indeed the correct questions to be asking.

My role and this is to try and convey to my foreign friend what he needs to do in order to furnish his solicitor with the correct information. There’s two problems one is the English as a second language and the other is that he’s not the brightest crayon in the box.

I feel that if I knew with any certainty, for instance, that the daughter would not have a case at all if she did not have an LPA then I would impress this upon my friend so he understands it sufficiently.

If I knew with any certainty that even if she had the LPA and therefore could legally sue my friend on behalf of her elderly father, that she would be not complying with the spirit of the LPA bearing in mind that her father and my friend were more or less best friends before Covid and have never had a cross word.

it’s hard to explain but it’s very difficult to explain different avenues of thought to my foreign friend to the point of it being almost point-less, unless I have my facts straight, because the energy for me to explain and for him to understand makes the whole process quite exhausting!

As you say, one would hope that the solicitor has all this in hand, but since my friend doesn’t really understand the correspondence that he’s been furnished with, and he hasn’t shown it to me, it isn’t clear to me exactly where we’re at with all of this . I’m sorry to be so vague.

With regard to your questions about photographs, my friend has pictures ( submitted to his solicitor) from 30 also years ago of his family sitting on the patio which is now the base of his shed. The patio was obviously in his garden then and since he hasn’t moved the patio slabs, the shed sitting on them is in his garden now. He hasn’t got any specific pictures showing the border, only the fence in the background, and those are not terribly helpful, but have been submitted along with photos of the gardens as they are at the moment, along with the deeds and even the original plans from when the house was built.

What he does have, is a ton of other neighbours who are prepared to write testimonies saying that they were well aware that the elderly neighbour and my friend were on extremely good terms and had been for many many years, and that the new fence replaced the old fence in its entirety apart from the end panel as explained in my original post.

it is unclear what paperwork the neighbour’s daughter is waiting for… unless it is the power-of-attorney. I know that there is a backlog at the moment of upwards of 40 weeks on getting the paperwork through. It’s seems that every time My friend solicitor writes to the daughter solicitor and gives her a deadline to produce paperwork she always fails to meet her and asked for a further extension , seemingly without reason.

It’s very irritating because I feel I could write a simple letter that to the solicitor asking for a summary of where we are at, but of course I’m only the third party in this! I just want to be able to advise my foreign friend as best as I am able, since he is unfamiliar with UK law even though he has lived here for years.

i’m inclined to think that it’s just the daughters boyfriend pushing her to simply create an awkward tension between her father and my friend.
There may be no truth in the rumours that are circulating in the neighbourhood that the daughters boyfriend creates trouble where ever he goes of course, but who knows!