Ashtons Legal advises landowner on boundary dispute with neighbour

Ashtons Legal has recently advised a landowner on their boundary dispute in the local area.

The Ashtons Legal team, led by experienced Associate Annabel Mayer, assisted Mr R with a boundary dispute which arose between him and his neighbour.

A hedge had been planted on the boundary line between Mr R’s property and his neighbour’s property nearly fifty years before the dispute arose. As time passed, the hedge grew and widened, encroaching onto Mr R’s property.

Mr R began pruning his side of the hedge back as it became unruly, which upset his neighbour.

Mr R believed that the hedge had grown away from the real boundary line and onto his property, so he was entitled to cut it back to where he believed the real boundary was. Mr R’s neighbour, however, disagreed and believed that the hedge’s current position reflected the real boundary and, even if it had overgrown the real boundary, it had been like this for years which means he had acquired adverse possession rights onto Mr R’s land.

The historical plans and conveyance documents, in this case, were not drawn to scale, which wasn’t especially helpful to either side. Therefore, Mr R and his neighbour agreed to take a collaborative rather than an adversarial approach.

Ashtons Legal assisted by representing Mr R in settlement negotiations and the parties were able to come together and mutually agree where the real boundary would be going forward. A boundary agreement was drawn up and registered against the parties’ respective titles, thus giving them future certainty.

Annabel Mayer said “This matter had the potential to incur both parties’ considerable legal costs that would far outweigh the value of the land in dispute. In this instance, the neighbours sensibly recognised this and we were able to negotiate a boundary agreement reasonably quickly.”