Your thoughts - property line dispute

[Calhoun]

It looks like I have a property line dispute with my neighbor now that I want to put up fence. He has 9 acres and I have roughly 19. He purchased his property in 2020 and I purchased mine in 2023. He gave me a copy of a survey on his property that was probably conducted for the seller of his property. The survey shows placement of survey pins at his 4 corners. The problem is that the survey’s property lines are from 10 to 30 feet to my advantage. There are remnants of an old fence that trees have grown around (and that has corresponding surveyors paint markings despite being out of line with the survey pins). He thinks that old fence is the property line. The survey shows the old fence as an encroachment on my property. There is about a quarter to maybe a half acre of property in question. That may not sound like much, but the difference is fencing a cleared area vs fencing along the old fence full of 30-50+ year old trees. The tax assessor show the survey lines as boundaries on their website, so I’m paying tax on the disputed area.

Am I being unreasonable to expect him to honor the survey lines? If there was an existing fence in good condition and in use, I probably wouldn’t question it. But if I’m building a new one it seems reasonable to put it in the correct location.

 

[Silver]

The property line is the property line, no reasonable person would question that.
Although I do understand that in the US an old fence has the legal potential to override an original survey and establish an official property line.

 

[farmerjan]

No you are not being unreasonable... You own the property, you can put the fence on the property line. He can contest it, and make him pay for a new survey... at which time they will show the survey he has as the correct property line; if it is..

Do you also have a current survey? If so, does it correspond with the one he has and the tax map?

Also, surveyor paint marks that are on trees are for REFERENCE by the surveyor. They are NOT the actual property line. The pins at the corners, or wherever the line goes in a little different direction... is the actual line.. I have one line that has 6 pins as the line varied a few degrees and so they showed each point where the direction changed a little bit.

Old fences were usually put up to make it easier on the person doing the fencing at the time.... especially if it was their own property on both sides... and then the property gets subdivided and the fences are not always accurate.

 

[mwj]

A legal survey is what you go buy. That is what is used to determine a piece of property's location on the surface of the earth.

If he had a problem with the pins location he should not have purchased the property. Build your fence and move on.

 

[sstterry]

It looks like I have a property line dispute with my neighbor now that I want to put up fence. He has 9 acres and I have roughly 19. He purchased his property in 2020 and I purchased mine in 2023. He gave me a copy of a survey on his property that was probably conducted for the seller of his property. The survey shows placement of survey pins at his 4 corners. The problem is that the survey’s property lines are from 10 to 30 feet to my advantage. There are remnants of an old fence that trees have grown around (and that has corresponding surveyors paint markings despite being out of line with the survey pins). He thinks that old fence is the property line. The survey shows the old fence as an encroachment on my property. There is about a quarter to maybe a half acre of property in question. That may not sound like much, but the difference is fencing a cleared area vs fencing along the old fence full of 30-50+ year old trees. The tax assessor show the survey lines as boundaries on their website, so I’m paying tax on the disputed area.

Am I being unreasonable to expect him to honor the survey lines? If there was an existing fence in good condition and in use, I probably wouldn’t question it. But if I’m building a new one it seems reasonable to put it in the correct location.

Get a new survey and have them mark the lines with flags. Also, when you build the new fence, pull it back off the line about 6" to be safe.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

If the survey you have is recent and from a licensed/bonded surveyor then one can make a reasonable assumption that it's accurate and put your fence on those lines.

If he doesn't agree then he is free to hire his own surveyor and if the two experts don't agree then they can go to court and figure it out.

Been there done that, got the merrit badge for it. Lol

 

[bird dog]

You have every right to put the fence on the property line. Saying that, it might be best to put the fence in the best spot even if it means some land is outside of the fence. That doesn't mean you are conceding the land to him but you would need to ask him to sign and notarized statement saying that he is aware of the fence being not on the property line and he will not ask for a adverse possession ruling and that his agreement will transfer to the next owners.

There are millions of places in the country where the fence is built where it is convenient. The court recognizes these and rarely will rule against the survey. Many places have the center of a creek as the property line. This really confuses things when the creek moves but most people just accept that and don't raise a stink. My place is like that but smart land owners pull their fence off the creek anyway to avoid flood damage and just accept that some of your acreage is unusable.

 

[Calhoun]

No you are not being unreasonable... You own the property, you can put the fence on the property line. He can contest it, and make him pay for a new survey... at which time they will show the survey he has as the correct property line; if it is..

Do you also have a current survey? If so, does it correspond with the one he has and the tax map?

Also, surveyor paint marks that are on trees are for REFERENCE by the surveyor. They are NOT the actual property line. The pins at the corners, or wherever the line goes in a little different direction... is the actual line.. I have one line that has 6 pins as the line varied a few degrees and so they showed each point where the direction changed a little bit.

Old fences were usually put up to make it easier on the person doing the fencing at the time.... especially if it was their own property on both sides... and then the property gets subdivided and the fences are not always accurate.

I don’t have a survey of my place. I was thinking of contacting the original survey company to come mark / confirm the line. Maybe that wouldn’t cost too much.

 

[Travlr]

I don’t have a survey of my place. I was thinking of contacting the original survey company to come mark / confirm the line. Maybe that wouldn’t cost too much.

I think that's a good idea...

 

[sstterry]

I don’t have a survey of my place. I was thinking of contacting the original survey company to come mark / confirm the line. Maybe that wouldn’t cost too much

This is your best option.

 

[M.Magis]

The pins are the line. Period. Fences mean nothing.

 

[Lucky]

Sounds like you've got a good case. The old fence lines can be used as property lines as well as who has maintained the property for a number of years. I think I'd fight him on it if it's useable land.

I've got a fence line that gives my neighbor a couple acres. You can clearly see they built the fence back in the 50's to stay on the south side of a drainage ditch and the 2 acres isn't of any value grazing wise to either of us. He's a long standing lawyer in town so I've left it alone so far. If he ever sells I'll bring it up with the new owner. I doubt we'll ever clear the spot for new fence but if we do I'll just build the fence on the property line and let him find out on his own.

 

[wbvs58]

When you say pins are you referring to steel pins as in galvanised pipe? Where I am, steel pins in the ground are usually reference marks so the actual corner may be a meter or so away, the actual corners if marked are usually pegged with a white painted peg in the ground.Have a good look at the survey plan, look for the legend at the side it should list the corners and give the bearing and distance from the reference mark to the actual corner, the trick is knowing whether the bearing is from the pin to the mark or from the mark to the pin. It could very well be that the old fence is along the property line if the surveyor marked it with paint, look for a nail in the top of the corner post. Again the legend should say nail in top of post.
Where I am I make good use of the local government mapping based on satellite and aerial photography and I can add layers of property boundaries and take the coordinates by placing the cursor on the corner and reading the coordinates down the bottom left hand corner and then go out in the field with a hand held gps or phone to find the approximate position of a corner which is a good starting point. This is not 100% accurate but I find it pretty close. Once the surveyor lodges a survey plan then these lines get updated on the map. Just recently I took a government surveyor up the back of my place to show him an 1866 original survey reference tree along our state border that he wanted to record with his $80,000 GPS giving just mm accuracy, once he went back to the office the line on the map of the state border was shifted to this mark which is on the original survey as a corner.

Ken

 

[Dave]

There can be a lot of things. Have a licensed surveyor put in the line. I don't know if he has been there long enough or used that disputed portion. But there is such a thing as adverse possession. And I know that can come back and bite you.

 

[Silver]

This is what they look like on my place. This pin sits at the junction so sections 3,4,33 and 34, Township 85 Range 23 West of the 6th meridian. Placed in 1931

 

[mwj]

There can be a lot of things. Have a licensed surveyor put in the line. I don't know if he has been there long enough or used that disputed portion. But there is such a thing as adverse possession. And I know that can come back and bite you.

With adverse I believe the possession must be notorious not unknown.

 

[kenny thomas]

You state you did not have a survey done when you bought the land. Has it been surveyed in the past? If so it should be recorded with the deed at that time and your deed should reference points and distances between points.

 

[RDFF]

The property line is the property line, no reasonable person would question that.
Although I do understand that in the US an old fence has the legal potential to override an original survey and establish an official property line.

@Silver has it right here. The original surveyors were going across the country literally dragging chains and doing their measuring, through unsettled country full of brush and forests and swamps. Can you IMAGINE how difficult of a job that would have been to maintain accuracy? And it is absolutely amazing to me just how accurate they got it, when I have a hard time pulling a fenceline though brush in a straight line. This is why you see "straight highways" that aren't straight. When they put them on a map, they're straight, but many times, they're anything but. That's how far off from a GPS coordinated survey the original survey was though.

The point then is, the ORIGINAL survey is what counts... wherever they set the pins ORIGINALLY, that's what you have to go by. Typically, when the land was homesteaded, a fence, placed ON that property line, was one of the first things that had to be put up, to designate what is your property, and to actually have an "improvement" in order to receive it from the government as homestead property. That fence then WAS the property line, literally. And there "should be" some original corner markers (called monuments), or at least "quarter section markers" or something that they must reference from. The "new" surveyors simply go off of the references on the property abstract, using GPS coordinates... which may or may not be exactly where the "original survey" back in the 1800's had placed the pins.

As far as property line fences... they are SUPPOSED TO BE BUILT right on the property line (not off to one side or the other "to be safe"), to intentionally designate "what's yours" and "what's your neighbor's" property. That setting it off just a bit is a sure way to have a property line dispute in the future! Each of you is responsible for half of that fence too... even if only one of you wants a fence. At least that's Minnesota's fence law. Meet your neighbor at the property line, facing each other, at the center point of your shared property line. Shake hands there like good neighbors should... whatever is to your right side is "your fence" to pay for, install and maintain. If you can't agree on what kind of fence has to be installed... it goes to the "fence authority"... which in our area is the township supervisors. There are "minimum standards" in Minnesota law that can be applied. What they determine becomes enforceable as the law.

Current MN law says that a fence is only "required" if ONE of the property owners wants it. If neither of them wants a fence though, it can be eliminated... and often, there's no corner markers or anything left in place. And then also just as often, once the fence is removed, greed sets in, and farmers "crowd that line" with their tillage equipment... and if one is just a little pushier than the other, he'll eventually be farming a fair amount of his neighbor's ground. Had it right here with my one neighbor who insists on getting every sq. in. ... the other neighbor was in the nursing home, renting to another guy... so the "pushy neighbor" got away with alot... in the end, he had 6 rows of corn over the line for a number of years. I mentioned it to the neighbor in the nursing home once when I went to visit him... and he had a survey done and took back his land. There's markers every so often along that line now... but "less of them" as the years go by, because that neighbor still has to plow right up to those T posts (we put a 10' piece of 2" PVC over the T post, so you can see them for sure... but with this wide equipment, it's pretty easy to swipe down a post).

I WISH that the law still REQUIRED a minimum system of fencing around all rural properties... it'd eliminate alot of property line disputes. They never should have been removed. If you split off a parcel from your property, it should have to be fenced ON THE PROPERTY LINE before selling it. If I'm replacing a "marker post" (like an old rotted wooden post with a new one), I make sure it goes right back in the same hole, so nobody can claim that I moved it. Lately I've been replacing all the wood with fiberglass posts... they should last forever pretty much... or at least well past MY time here.

Good fences make good neighbors!

 

[StrojanHerefords]

He gave you the survey that showed the property line didn’t match the old fence line.

 

[sstterry]

With adverse I believe the possession must be notorious not unknown.

Adverse possession in Texas allows a trespasser to gain legal title to property if they openly, continuously, and exclusively occupy it without the owner's permission (sometimes the word hostile is used). The amount of time required in TX is sketchy. But in TN it seven years.