neighbor made improvements to our land and now wants to get paid for it...

[SSpade19]

What is the name of your state? CA

We bought a piece of land 10 years ago and recently discovered that our neighbor has extended his fence in front of his house to enclose our property as well. There has always been a fence in the back of both our properties and one fence to the left of his and right of our propert. But there has never been a fence between our property so after he extended his fence in front of his house, he practically enclosed his and our property. He also started to develop our property and planted grass/trees and build a shed on top of our property. Overall, he probably used our land for more than 5 years but has not paid any property tax on it so he cannot claim it under adverse posession.

We are in agreement that this land is ours but our neighbor now plans to sue us to get back money for all the improvement he has made to our land. My question is if he has a shot. I mean if you wash my car and add some mods to it without my consent you cannot expect to get paid for it right? Of course real estate law isn't always as straightforward as this. In any case if he does have a good chance I will probably need an attorney and was wondering if there any good ones in the LA/Orange County area that are not too expensive to handel these small claims (they probably want to sue us in the 10-20 thousand area) real estate cases?

 

[BelizeBreeze]

Send your neighbor a certified (RRR) letter demanding they remove the 'impediments' to your property within 5 days or you will proceed with legal remedy to force them to comply.

Simple enough.

 

[SSpade19]

Send your neighbor a certified (RRR) letter demanding they remove the 'impediments' to your property within 5 days or you will proceed with legal remedy to force them to comply.

Simple enough.

So, If I do that it will prevent them sueing us to get money for the improvements they made?

 

[HomeGuru]

So, If I do that it will prevent them sueing us to get money for the improvements they made?

**A: no, nothing you do will prevent then from suing you. Anybody can sue anybody for anything.

 

[SSpade19]

I am just wondering if they have a chance to win this case, causing us to pay them for the improvements they have made to our land eventhough we have no use for them. Using common sense it doesnt seem like we should pay them for the un-authorized improvements they have made, but the legal system here isn't that straight forward.

 

[JETX]

Based solely on the information in your post.... they have ZERO (or less) chance of winning a judgment to recover the funds they spent on YOUR property without your permission or authorization.

In fact, their 'improvements' are now yours as they have become 'fixed' to the land.

Send the neighbors a very nice letter (certified RRR) thanking them for the 'gift' and be sure to include that if they trespass on your property in the future, you will have them arrested!! That should get their attention!!
Or if you don't want their 'improvements', you can certainly demand that they remove them and return the property to its 'pre-violation' condition.... all at their cost of course.