Neighbours from hell dispute over shared driveway

jack-lad

Its horrible when things like this happens. We have the same in our current house. But we are looking at moving. The drive being one of the problems.

We share a drive with 2 other houses. Access to there garages is across the bottom of our drive.

Everything is fine unless we have friends round, because people see our cars they park by them. But this causes problems with the neighbours for reasons that they have every right to drive there cars across when ever, an we should not block there access.

So we ask people to park on the road.

This is how we found out we have neighbours from hell. There is no issue with parking on the road, however the old couple who live opposite do not like cars being by there property, so they get angry and shout at us and guests.

Its mad, if you could see the road layout you would never understand why.

They have even spat on my friends car.

But they are really really old. So you cant do anything, if you understand what i mean.

The neighbour has joked before about them, saying there old they wont be around much longer.

No one likes them, and we have been so nice to them. Yet they just dont care!

So we fitted CCTV, they have not caused any problem since!

LizzieS_2

cats4ever wrote: »

Hi everyone I desperately need help. We live in a semi detached property and all our neighbours are really nice except the ones that live at the bottom. We share our driveway with them. We own the driveway but they have right of way.

It may be worth finding out why this convenant is there, eg as part of the building of your house, access was no longer available to your existing neighbours house unless the builder created a right of way, or, their house was built on land owned by you (well previous owners of your house) and there was insufficient space to create 2 driveways.

Libraries hold a lot of old plans - by old I mean ones before your house existed as it it now. Internet searches can also help find these. Local (well nearly) Land Registry offices are also helpful.

On our papers it says both parties can not park on the driveway.

Expect it to say that as both have an equal right of way.

It also says on the deeds that they have to maintain and repair the driveway.

Not convinced that has been read properly. Unless it very clearly states only one party has to pay the full cost of repair, both would be expected to contribute irrespective of who uses it the most. Again research into the history may help your cause here. Also may be worth getting a copy of your neighbours deeds - about £4 to buy online from Land Registry.


We have been living here now for 5 years and had problems with the previous neighbours everytime we asked them to repair or maintain the driveway. They ended up selling the property and getting out of this mess.

Sellers do have a legal right to inform the purchasers of any dispute within the last year (at least) with neighbours. They can avoid this by being untruthful with their solicitor, but they still carry the burden of costs if the purchaser susequently finds there is a dispute (by costs I mean costs in a civil case between purchaser & seller of a resulting dispute of non disclosure of facts). In England this was certainly the case when the last sale went to the NFH. May sound harsh and nasty, but I would certainly be making sure any future prospective purchaser knew of the dispute.

The new neighbours have had the house now for over 2 1/2 years and everything was peachy until we asked them to repair and maintain the driveway(the driveway has barely any tarmac left and weeds are growing everywhere).

Did you have problems with the parking/speeding etc before this point?

At first they stalled us for a year by saying they wanted to buy their own driveway from a field adjoining our driveway and were enquiring from the land registry office as to who owns the land.

That made no difference to the costs - yes they could have given up their right of access, but not repairs for past damage unless you agreed otherwise (personally I would have jumped at that chance, but I wouldn't have given them 12 months to stall me).

Later they started saying they owned half the driveway.

You need to look at both sets of deeds - they should match, but you can never 100% say that without viewing.

So about a month ago we had our soliciter take a look at our paperwork. He said they do not own the driveway and wrote over 5 letters to the neighbours explaining that we own the driveway and that they have to repair and maintain it. He also made it clear that they are not allowed to park there at any time and shouldn't be driving at high speeds, beeping their car horns or running over our cats. They still continue to do this. They also invite all their friends and relatives over and have up to 6 cars parked on the driveway especially on weekends. On special occasions there are up to 10 cars parked on our driveway. They have not replied to any of our soliciters letters and when we ask them to move their cars they just ignore us.

If you want to get to your garage, the police will move them (but they will not enter into the remaining civil dispute).

Unless the deeds (both sets) are 100% clear you are realistically looking at a 50:50 split of costs of repair. Can you afford 50%?

A couple of days ago my husband parked our car on the driveway and they knocked on the door and started an argument with us. The wife called in some of her relatives to come and threaten us and they said if we park on the driveway again they'll park behind us. Unfortunately our soliciter only deals with property buying and selling so he can't help us take them to court. The other problem we are having is my husband had to quit his job a few years ago (I became seriously ill)and now he cares for me regularly. We can't afford to take our neighbours to court and can't find a solliciter to fight our case.

All a solictor has to do in court is have the legal knowledge to interpret the deeds. Fair enough he personally may not deal with making small claims, but some-one in his firm must (he does the bit he knows). I am seriously wondering here whether your deeds say exactly what you think, if they did a solicitor would snatch your money to fight.


We don't even know if we can get legal aid for something like this.

I doubt it, maybe that is what is really putting the solicitors off?

I hope someone can help us. We need help urgently. We can't carry on living this way and the neighbours are taking advantage of us more and more everyday.

Ok look at the best scenario of you winning everything - winning is fine providing the neighbours can stump up the cash. The cash of sucess is actually you neighbours key fighting point - if they've nothing and are struggling they may well just bankrupt themselves. Hate to say it, but your best course of action here is to go for a compromise (heavily weighted on hoping they can buy that other land by hook or crook - legally they can use it for 12 years then claim it as their own if the real owner does not come forward within those 12 years to dispute), though I would certainly think paying 50% each is fair and allowing them some say in what is done/by who.

Hope you come back with more detail.

Welshwoofs

Before this escalates any further I'd want to see their deeds. My Mother had an issue in the past where the neighbours started they wanted to build a small extension on land which my Mother's deeds stated explicitly was hers. The problem was, when she raise this with them, they produced their deeds which showed the exact same piece of land belonged to their house (it was a small slice between the houses). Luckily they all got on well and sorted it out amicably.

You may well be absolutely sure that you own the driveway and they have to repair/maintain but it may say otherwise in their set.