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Comment by aetherspawn | Hacker News Reader

A neighbor once moved the pegs marking our block a few meters so that he could move (and claim) the neutral strip. The most irritating thing, is that he more or less got away with it because he was old and persistent. In fact, he gradually built infrastructure on it, despite hundreds of complaints to the local council and authorities. In the end the council couldn't come up with a good way to settle the dispute, so they offered to auction the neutral strip and its contents between us to the highest bidder.

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From what I've seen of several such issues in the US, this is not legal advice, but if it ever happens to you, you are well advised to A: hire out a surveyer or do whatever it takes to be absolutely sure you are correct before proceeding down this list B: issue notice to all the correct locations (to the violator and the relevant boards in charge of the lines) and then C: after a suitable, but not too long period of time, take concrete action to remove the offending things. Hire a lawyer somewhere in the mix to be sure you're not violating any other local laws. (I especially don't know what you should do with the "offending things", e.g., can you take them yourself? Do you have to throw them back on the property line side? What if this involves a certain amount of demolition? I don't know.)

I've seen a number of people in my extended social circles do varying combinations of A and B, but still eventually losing because of a failure to do C, because they don't want to be confrontational or whatever.

(I am specifying "in the US" because I'm fairly sure this is related to common law. Countries operating under other traditions may not see this effect. However in common law, there's a certain element of having to be able to "defend" your property in order for it to be yours.)

I'm not sure what the "neutral strip" means, but if it's something like the sidewalk in front of a house, then the relevant US law would be that public property cannot be acquired through adverse possession, no matter how persistent the trespasser may be.

In this case it was a council-owned dirt road between two unfenced properties. By moving his property onto the road and erecting a pergola on the road, the path of the road moved onto our property, which he then claimed was the true location of the road. Then he pulled up fruit trees that were planted at the front of our property (for privacy) because now it seemed like they were planted on the strip, which is supposed to be empty. In truth, those fruit trees made it obvious that he had moved the road and that's why he wanted to pull them up.

The 'neutral strip' that they auctioned off, was actually the very tippy end of the road (which they can do, unless it hinders someones driveway access), and we lost access to our second driveway, which is entirely illegal except there's a whole bunch of legal nonsense you have to submit to keep a driveway valid after it becomes blocked for a certain period of time, otherwise the driveway is automatically considered cancelled (in this case, his pergola blocked it for long enough that you need a new driveway permit if you can believe it). A new driveway permit can not be approved if the driveway can not be accessed, and so the fun begins. To make the driveway valid, and hence the sale of the land under the pergola illegal, they made it seem like we needed to forfeit the strip to general access...

I'm not even being sarcastic when I say that surveying property borders, roads and driveways seems like a perfect application for an immutable and easily auditable blockchain based on lat/lon.

I've heard many stories of property lines being moved simply by people moving a fence, mowing the grass, or building a structure. If no one has said anything in several years (exactly how many varies by jurisdiction, of course), the assumed property line can often become the legal property line.

In a lot of areas in the US (but not all) a period of notice is necessary. This precludes events where a neighbor steals property from another surreptitiously. In some cases if the land is "abandoned" you need to make the person who owns it aware of it, in others it is presumed if someone does not visit their land for 7 years they have no interest in it.

(This is getting complicated and challenged due to the fact suburbs are popping up nearly everywhere and totally useless land may now be worth money.)

In the case above simply demolish whatever the guy built. He tries to sue in civil court and fails because he had no right to build there.

That happened constantly in the Danish country side when I grew up. My dad and grandfather had to check up on one neighbor in particular pretty frequently, otherwise he grab half a meter of our field every other year or so.

Despite not having lived on the farm for 25 year my mom and dad are often brought out to help settle dispute regarding property lines.

Technically everything is mapped out and moving a post or plowing a wrong part of the field doesn’t change ownership, but some of the maps are old and reference point are no longer where they once where.

That wouldn't happen if you hired a surveyor. They don't go off of fences or grass, they go off of what plat map and the record in the planning office at city hall says about your deed. Banks and lenders might actually require another survey to happen before a home is purchased.

> In the end the council couldn't come up with a good way to settle the dispute, so they offered to auction the neutral strip and its contents between us to the highest bidder.

Here in Germany, he would be issued a demolition order by the court that, in case of non-compliance, will be enforced even with armed police if deemed necessary. On top of that the affected party can sue him for damages.

They don't really enforce it much in Romania, but when they do, same. I've seen stuff get bulldozed down.

Unfortunately people usually know how the enforcement happens in their countries and happily take advantage of the disfunctional authorities.

In a lot of cases, the affected party is the local council (government) which often doesn't care (or doesn't have enough free time to care).

Sounds like the US. The Sheriff would come if the court issued an order. In my county you can get the survey if it has been done on the property. It’s public records and details the property markers they found.

My father's uncle kept moving the fence between our property and his so he could drive to the back of his own property. This was an ongoing thing. I think eventually my father just gave up and let him have the strip. Now neither property is in the hands of family and no one will know unless a survey is done in the future.

In at least some jurisdictions, allowing someone to do this over a period of years can create an easement that has ongoing legal effect. You don't lose title to the land, but neither are you allowed to prohibit the neighbor from traveling over it.

I'm in a similar situation with the local road council who are trying to move a road onto our land so that people can keep higher speeds in a specific corner. It's a very good idea to have documentarion for where the markers are once a neighbor is hell-bent on driving a bit faster with his tractor.

In some states this is how you can legally claim land by occupying it, although usually you need to pay taxes on it. Where my parents live if there is an abandoned lot between two homes, the owners can split it for one dollar paid to the city a piece and add it to their parcels, or one person could claim the whole thing if the other neighbor stands down. Property laws are very weird and there are some old school ordinances on the books that date back hundreds of years.

Trespass is usually a civil matter and councils only deal with planning issues (at least here in the UK so I imagine also in Australia). So even if the land was the council's they could not do more than involving lawyers and going to court. They might have rightly concluded that it was not worth it for them to spend money on an useless piece of land and decided to sold it instead since there was obviously demand for it.

This all goes well just until it goes horribly wrong and you’re forced to demolish everything you built.

...or you encounter a bit of chainsaw diplomacy: (link in Norwegian, but the photos are quite telling.)

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/GkGJm/nabotvist-paa-ne...

Wow, rather than exercise a bit of flexibility some people truly have their sense of entitlement stuck in overdrive.

The guy who did this also rubbished 70 year old stone fence - erected a generation before he was born, and ended up in jail after a number of court cases. Talk about pissing your life away because of misplaced anger.

https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/4deprG/huskapper-i-asker-...

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