Right of Way over private lane and hedge maintenance and adverse possession.

C

cuppatea

Guest
I live on a private lane over which we have a "right of way" to our property.

The boundary to our property is the natural root hedge line and does not extend to the verge or roadway.

The thing I am questioning is the adjoining landowner (owner of laneway) never maintained the boundary of our property cut hedging etc, this was done by a local farmer for years.

The adjoining landowner is a "farmer" and when cutting his hedgerow yearly on all his land he stops at the beginning of the roadside boundary to our garden does not cut the hedging infront of our house/garden and then continues to cut the hedging at the farside of our property.

The house has been her for 30 years and the boundary fronting onto the lane has always been maintained by the occupants of our house.

Does this extinguish the rights of the landowner with regard to the hedge boundary? Can we claim a stake to this land?

This is not a "land grab" we are after we just want to properly maintain this piece of land.

Any advise?
 
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what's stopping you from just maintaining the hedge yourselves? it doesn't need to get legal or become a land grab, just cut the hedge yourself.


 
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Whats stopping us is the neighbour.

We have no problem maintaining the hedge ourselves in fact we are more than happy to maintain it, it is in front of our house after all and we like to keep it in order nice and neat.

The problem is we removed part of the hedge and put up a fence to tidy up the place. This looks great, unfortunately we didn't know at the time the hedge didn't technically belong to our property, somehow the site our house is on does not extend out to the edge or centre of road so the hedge belongs to the neighbour.

He has threatened court proceedings . He wants us for damage, trespassing & encroachment. I wouldn't mind but it's not a decent hedge it's a scrappy bitty briary auld field hedge.

We did try to talk to this guy but it wasn't a runner.

He went straight to solicitor instead of approaching us first to tell us it was his hedge.
 
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What does your solicitor advise?

What do the deeds to your property say?

What do the deeds to the property which consist of the private lane have to say in relation to the ROW etc?
 
I think you should have started this thread with the above information.

The information on the house boundary sounds dodgy to me.
What sort of conveyancing leaves you in this position?
Either you were sold a pup or didn't check it out fully.

You need to take competent professional advice.
You may need an architect to attend and swear.

OTOH if you inherited this property you owed it to yourself to investigate the lease and any maps associated with the transfer.
Assumptions based on observation may be irrelevant where there is a legal document to peruse.
The condition of the hedge may irrelevant in a boundary matter.

Now, all that having been said, there is a new law in the land called -

The Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2009

Read Chapter 3 Party structures and you may wish to instruct a solicitor to prepare your defence partly based on the provisions of this Act.
I am not au fait with it all yet, but boundaries seem to have entered a whole new ball park with this act and you may find the rules have changed to help soften your neighbour's cough.

Depending on the condition and importance of the boundary two conflicting piece of legislation may also arise, both stemming from the Planning realm.
Protection of historic hedgerows and boundaries is a Green agenda which in South Dublin Co. Co. for example is enshrined in the development plan.
However there could also be an argument in relation to derelict sites such that the hedge provided harbourage for rats and vermin or in general was contributing to the delinquency of an area [I made that phrase up, but it sounds the part].

Again, you should instruct your solicitor to review all such possibly helpful matters and advise you on your defence.

ONQ.
 
ONQ
thanks for your reply and info. I didn't want to complicate this post and confuse people but here goes...so at the moment we are renting the property and have started the wheels in motion to buy it out (it's a local authority house).

We have had engineers look at the site and do up the measurements. Part of our fence is indeed on his property, the fence is positioned 18in closer to the road than should be for a run of about 10feet. We have no problem moving the fence back etc but are havin no luck getting a reply from his solicitors on exactly what he wishes us to do, how he would like the boundary reinstated.

Anyway that all aside, the council want to push ahead with the sale of the property with the boundarys as they are but we are unhappy to go ahead with this as it leaves is in a position whereby the "neighbour'' can and most likely will use this strip of land in front of our house for bullying & harassment for years.

Most houses in Ireland hold a boundary out to the center of the road and I have yet to come across anyone who has heard of a situation like this. We are trying to come up with a solution to sort out this issue as this is our home we'd like to buy and just get on with living here.

So far any advice we have gotten from the local authority and our solicitor has proven very poor, 'get this report done, get that done' but no talk of how it might be resolved or what options are available to us. So thats the mission I'm on to see what solutions people may be aware of, this has been ongoing since April and we are no further on than when we started. Thats why I was asking about squatters right etc, also the lane although private is open to the public all year round and is used by a number of locals etc. And in relation to the condition of the boundary it was a haven for rats i used to watch them from my window in horror, the bank under the hedge was riddled with rats holes/burrows!

Sorry if the above is a bit rambling :)


To make matters worse the 'neighbour' called to us on Saturday had a go at my husband and the dog (cavalier king charles-quiet as a mouse) and made some threats!
 
ajapale said:
What does your solicitor advise?

What do the deeds to your property say?

What do the deeds to the property which consist of the private lane have to say in relation to the ROW etc?
Click to expand...

If you are buying a house you really should engage a solicitor.
 
We have a solicitor, however we are not that far along yet I haven't had them instructed to begin searches yet for the purchase.
In relation to the ROW we have been assured there is a right of way written into deeds, of course we will have to have this confirmed by our solicitor before buying.

We had our ex solicitor look into this and got nowhere he failed to reply to solicitors letters etc from the other side then sent letters to us backdated to cover himself when I called him up on it?!!! Needless to say we now have a new solicitor.
 
Sorry to hear your problems with the first solicitor.
Please report him to the ILS and do us all a favour by doing so.

You need to record the encounters with the neighbour and report them to the Gardaí.
Its very important that you put down a marker with this kind of aggressive person that you know your rights and are no pushover, but equally important that you involve the Gardaí at an early stage.

There really doesn't seem to be a lot that AAM can offer without the inspections I pointed out above.
"You may need an architect to attend and swear."

He may be asked to inspect the boundary and mark it on a map for comparison purposes - but only engage him if requested to do so by your solicitor, who will in general call the shots in how best to resolve this matter.

Personally I would revert to the Council, who according to my Council's Parks Department, have the power to literally take an offending boundary hedge back to the legal boundary using one of their heavy duty rotary trimmers.

If they are selling this them IMO they should resolve any unusual issues with the boundary before hand using their own powers of compulsory purchase or whatever and not leave it to a private citizen like you with your comparatively limited means to resolve such issues.

HTH

ONQ.
 
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