Originally published at: Retired couple loses £45k in neighbor fence feud - Boing Boing
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For when it comes up
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So much about this story is confusing. Maybe it’s the nature of the images that don’t make the details of the dispute clear. That makes it hard to tell why the couple lost their case. Was the new parking situation difficult, or impossible?
The other point that jumps out at me is the repeated headlines that £45k was this couple’s life savings. That just makes me wonder how different retirement and cost of living must be where they live. 
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The juxtaposition of the image at the top of the post, and the actual drive is kind of hilarious.
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They live in the UK, own their house and probably have a private pension topped up with their state pension; the £45k was most likely a nice cushion in case things went pear shaped. Still, it is a sad, Bleak House style tale.
Edit because I am semi-functionally illiterate.
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Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for explaining. It is sad, but at this point maybe they’ll try to work with the new neighbors or find alternative transport/parking.
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Do you not get a survey before you purchase a property? It seems like that would clearly delineate who owns what.
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It seems odd that they didn’t check the property line before getting embroiled in the legal case. It costs less than a fiver to get a copy of the deeds from the Land Registry. It is a real shame.
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As far as I can tell from the video, the red line is where the fence was, and the purple is where he claims the neighbor’s actual property line sits:
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They were “told” is was shared, but apparently never actually looked at the property lines?
I’ve seen so many versions of this story, usually on r/BoomersBeingFools where someone with no legal right to a neighbor’s property gets mad when the neighbor tells them to stop using it. This story just seems written from the other side.
The article includes a lot of “the say” type sources. I suspect they asked to have the “shared drive” put into the deed and the neighbor realized they would be giving away something of real value. Either that or some fight these people want to pretend didn’t happen so they don’t look like the bad guys.
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Certainly unfortunate for them, but maybe not only them. Assuming that the legal case was correctly decided (which is a big assumption that may well not be correct, I know) I wonder how much money their neighbor ended up spending to fight that case?
Certainly reminds me of this recent post:
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Whoever loses, the lawyers win.
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My guess is they were parking wherever they pleased on the shared drive, including using the space closer to their neighbor’s home. The neighbor probably got tired of it, talked to an attorney, and put up the fence. This couple lost access to extra parking and got pissed.
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You used “AI” for a picture of a country lane so it doesn’t even work as an illustration of the story.
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Well, we all know that Ye Olde England is a bucolic paradise, right.
Edit
Judging by the purple line in @lastchance’s post, the couple lost access to their garage. I wonder what order the properties were build in.
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Extra parking there, though.
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Except for that one lawyer who was working on the property line dispute in A Serious Man…
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Probably more like Valet Parking; with the discrete staff taking the parked car away from in front of the property and storing it in a local chop shop 
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They did not lose access to their garage. There’s a picture in the linked article showing the fence.
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Is that a photo of before or after the fence was moved? The measurements appear to show the property line being 0.8m to the right? 
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