Neighbours Trees??

EllaBaby

I've read these forums for ages but never plucked up the courage to post before but need some advice and don't know where else to turn. Hope someone can give me some help.
My neighbours trees overhang my property. She is a widow and probably doesn't even realise as her house is on the next road up from mine. We live on a mountain, sorry, its hard to describe. Anyway on Monday night, we had bad gales driving rain etc etc and when I got up the next morning my downstairs loo had water running down the walls. Its on the ground floor with a pitched roof (under her trees!). Managed to get out later and found a few of her trees had snapped off and landed on my roof!
On phoning my insurance company they said they'd send someone out to look but as I had claimed on my insurance and the damage was to my property then I would be liable for the £100.00 excess.
The damage was clearly caused by her trees. Is it right that I should pay?
How do I approach this problem now?
Please don't suggest I go to see her as I live on my own with two children and am totally intimidated by situations like this, sorry to sound like a wimp but I'm not very strong at the moment.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

mara

In order to pursue a successful claim against your neighbour, you would need to prove that she has been negligent. In cases like these it is very difficult to do so The only way to prove your neighbour is liable would be if the trees were in a dangerous state before the storm and you had made her aware of the potential problem and she failed to take any action. Otherwise it is just an unfortunate accident. Sorry this probably doesnt help you too much. Hope you get the roof sorted via your insurers.

mattymoo

No idea where you live Ellababy but assume you were hit by the storms around 6 weeks ago. The tree survived that and so the neighbour might reasonably assume it would be safe.
Of course, that wasn't the case but the neighbour could not be criticised for assuming otherwise.
There is nothing to stop you from chopping parts of the tree that overhang your property but if I recall correctly, you are supposed to return the cuttings.

My advice would be to let your insurers deal with it, pay the £100 and move on. Aggro with the neighbour is not going to get you anywhere.

courtjester

In practice, the question of responsibility for falling trees can be decided quite easily on the facts.

If there have been previous incidents involving (professional) advice to the neighbour that their trees were dangerous, and nothing was done, the neighbour would be responsible when the inevitable happened.

If there is no previous history or evidence relating to the possibility that the trees were in dangerous condition, then no-one is to blame.

As with all (severe) storm claims involving debris flying from one property and damaging another, the cause of the damage is the storm (or as many people might class it 'act of god'). As such there is no potential to claim against the neighbour merely on the grounds that the debris or tree came from their property.

In the absence of liability elsewhere, the damage to your house is covered by your house insurance. Most policies cover damage to the property through 'falling trees' (yours or someone else's) including the cost of removing those parts of the tree which have fallen onto the building.

The cost of pruning, trimming or removing fallen trees or parts thereof that are merely laying on the ground are generally not covered.