Hi. I live in Southern California and am frustrated by a neighbor land dispute and want to know my rights regarding the construction of a fence. We purchased a 4.85 acre parcel in March. In the documents left to us by the previous owner, we have in our possession a legal border marker record on file. We found all four of the legal boundary markers on the land. We started to build a fence for our horses. The neighbor came over and insisted that we were building on her property. She has no permanent markers set to show that she is in the right and has not hired a surveyor to prove that the old markers were wrong. In addition, her own fence was built within one inch of the previous survey even though she claims she never knew that those corner markers existed.
We stopped building the fence and hired our own surveyor. We paid for a full survey. He not only concluded that the previous property markers were on our own land, but also found that her fence was one foot on our land and set new property markers and filed the new survey with the county. We now have TWO surveys that show our property is where we say and we want to build our fence. She continues to threaten us with lawsuits and claims that the property markers are in dispute. Are we safe in putting up our fence? I don't want to get into a huge legal battle with this woman, but by the same time, she's already delayed our construction by over a month and I want to get my horses on my own property. I feel that with two surveys on file, we should be well within our rights to build our fence. Am I wrong?
We stopped building the fence and hired our own surveyor. We paid for a full survey. He not only concluded that the previous property markers were on our own land, but also found that her fence was one foot on our land and set new property markers and filed the new survey with the county. We now have TWO surveys that show our property is where we say and we want to build our fence. She continues to threaten us with lawsuits and claims that the property markers are in dispute. Are we safe in putting up our fence? I don't want to get into a huge legal battle with this woman, but by the same time, she's already delayed our construction by over a month and I want to get my horses on my own property. I feel that with two surveys on file, we should be well within our rights to build our fence. Am I wrong?