My mom had a very similar situation. There was a multi-unit garage that was originally built across the property line to serve two different properties. The majority of the garage was on my mom’s property, with a small portion of it (one bay) on the neighbors property. The garage was in a sorry state of disrepair, and my mom wanted to tear it down. The neighbors were using their portion for storage, and refused. It took years of mediation and legal fees, with the neighbors dragging their feet as much as possible.
The garage did finally get torn down, legally. The dispute left everyone bitter and angry. The neighbors moved, and then my mom, disgusted with the whole thing, moved to another state entirely.
I think taking a sawzall to the garage (which I actually advocated for at the time) would have been far more efficient and in the end would have achieved the exact same results.
p.s. That video is little better than a chumbox listicle.
Lemme guess- beach access? That’s a very common dispute in CA. People buy a house on the beach and don’t understand that all beaches and access points are public in CA. The official access point for a section often looks very much like a breezeway beside their house on their property, so they put up a fence. Then they get a rude awakening when it turns out you don’t get to lock out poor people from your precious beach and you should have learned about the laws governing open beach access before coming here from NY and buying your fancy house.
Nope. Just public access through a huge developed single family property. It went about 1/8 mile downhill, and then through a gate and down the aforementioned couple’s driveway.
There were three couples involved; the two property owners who knew about the access on their property and another neighbor who bought their property next door, based on the semi-public access . (They wanted a safer route for their kids to go to school.) It was a crazy case. They really should have used mediation because the two couples could not prove that their shared gate remained locked for five years. Now anyone in the neighborhood has access.
