Do you need proven legal help to resolve a dispute with your neighbor in California?  There are many reasons why serious disputes and lawsuits may arise between neighbors.  Most of these issues surround boundary disputes, allegations of a blocked view or access to water.  The experienced neighbor dispute resolution attorneys at the Watkins Firm take a unique approach to disputes and litigation that is designed to accomplish our client’s goals in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Neighbors may disagree about where a lot line is and whether a fence, building or other landscaping feature or planting impinges upon or crosses a lot line.  The experienced real estate attorneys at the Watkins Firm have worked to resolve a dispute with your neighbor in California for more than four decades.  What outcome do you seek?  In some of these cases, our clients seek the removal of the offending fence, building or planting.  In other cases, our clients simply wish to seek fair compensation and the modification of lot lines.

Blocked view cases are extremely complex from a legal perspective.  The views in San Diego and throughout California can be quite spectacular.  What happens when a neighbor plants trees or constructs a building which obstructs your view immediately or over time?  Can your neighbor stop your plans or force you to remove trees or other obstructions?  These arguments may not have any legal basis whatsoever, or they may represent a serious threat to the value and enjoyment of your home.

In order to resolve a dispute with your neighbor in California you need proven attorneys with extensive legal knowledge and experience, as well as tact and sensitivity.  You may wish to remove some of the heat from the argument at hand and seek resolution.  You may wish to aggressively pursue the protection of your view.  Our experienced litigation and real estate attorneys will protect your interests and provide sound counsel and advice in your matter.

Pro-Tip: “Boundary disputes range from an old fence that fell over and someone put it back up. People acting as their own fence contractors and not using a surveyor or soil subsidence. You take out an old retaining wall, you put in something that’s rots away, and all of a sudden your land is now on the neighbor’s land and the big rain comes, and all of a sudden everybody’s fighting and arguing.

Someone gets an estimate and no one wants to believe how much it’s going to cost, and then they fight. And then you have trouble having resolutions. Hard words are spoken, feelings are hurt, and everybody digs their heels in and they would rather pay their lawyer billions of dollars than be reasonable. So we get a lot of those, or we try to help them resolve them, I’d say 90% of the time we can. But sometimes there’s real legitimate disputes that you have to fight for and boundary disputes, building fence across the line, building a building, a storage shed, whatever. Putting a driveway across your neighbor’s land. There’s a lot of ways that you can really get into an area where you have to defend your property. You got a million dollar property, a 10,000 square foot lot doesn’t take a rocket scientist to talk about the value of each square foot.

It’s a very expensive piece of land now. And somebody just taking a couple feet here, shaving it off, adds up to a couple hundred feet over the entire property line. And then you have a messed up title. Then, you’re messing up your obligations to your lender. It spirals out of control. All the problems when people don’t face reality, fix the boundary line problem and follow the law.

So another common issue that is a boundary issue is a fence in California. California, in general, often takes a unique kind of approach to a fence. What’s the general rule when there’s a fence between neighbors that’s on the property line? We’re talking about a ‘Community fence,’ ‘Common area fence,’ not common area. Both have an obligation to maintain and pay for share, basically share the expense of maintaining this fence and sometimes neighbors are great and sometimes neighbors are terrible about it.

And they have different opinions and different motivations too. A very common form of neighbor issue is negligence. And we had an issue where changes to a property above uphill basically caused soil erosion and a huge issue for our client who was downhill. There are duties when you own a piece of property and that are sometimes not followed. You have a duty to get your water to the street, not through the neighbor’s house, into their living room. I know the water falls from the sky and it’s not your fault, but you have a duty on your property to get your water from the back to the front. You also have a duty to not disrupt people’s quiet enjoyment. You have a duty to not have noxious fumes fill in the air.

You’ve got a duty to control your kids and not have vandals all over the place. And animals. And sometimes people’s sense of what’s normal and fair and reasonable is different than their neighbors. You got one neighbor that’s super quiet, and finicky and you got another neighbor that’s fun and live and large. So those personalities hit and they don’t get along. We try to get them to do alternative dispute resolution and other forms before they spend a bunch of money on us. We do try these cases. We do go to court and we’re successful, but before we get to that point, we always try to get them to see a cheaper, quicker, more reasonable way out until we all agree that this is no use, you need us to go get it done.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

If you are interested in resolving a dispute with a neighbor in California we invite you to review our podcast Episode 44 – Neighbor Disputes as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.