I have lived my home for ~10 years. When looking at my home, the left side perimeter ends with many acres of state owned forest. We have two direct neighbors, one next door to the right and one directly behind where our back yard meets. The house is located in Vermont
When i purchased the home, very thick and tall cedar trees (15-20 feed) lined the perimeter of both neighbors lots. Enough that you could be in the backyard and be nearly impossible to look into each neighbors yard. The neighbors on our right (~3 years ago) added a privacy fence on their side of the tree line. The neighbors behind us had only the trees and a small link fence dividing.
The issues with our backyard neighbors started last fall when they completely "trimmed" the trees (20-25 trees along the length of the property) from the ground to 12 feet in the air, leaving only the top 5 feet with branches. The trees went from having complete privacy to literally no branches from 0-12 feet. They did this trimming when my family was on vacation without any notice. I was under the impression when purchasing the home that we shared these trees but as it turns out, after looking into this further, they do entirely belong to the back neighbors. It was upsetting but they of course can do what they want with their property.
We decided to look into installing a privacy fence to get back some of the division between our lots (we now both look in on each other completely when using our yards). I approached the neighbors with a number of options so that we both would be happy with the design of the fence. I made it very clear i wasn't looking for any money, just wanted everyone to be happy with the design. I was told that they "wouldn't allow" for a fence to be installed as it would be a spite fence obstructing the sunlight into their yard (the reason they trimmed the trees). This would be a 6 foot wooden privacy fence. This would of course be entirely on our lot.
Could this neighbor truly cause any issues as we proceed to install this fence? I have a permit, contractor lined up and surveyed property line already for the install.
My concern is this neighbor, who is very hard to deal with in any regard, will make this into something more than it should and be costly and a pain to deal with (fines, being required to remove the fence, put in a different fence, etc).
Thank you
Written By: jbrenn802
Source: http://bit.ly/2XG3dah
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