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9 inches = £200,000

including wills and probate
Clitheroekid
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9 inches = £200,000

#474730

Postby Clitheroekid » January 20th, 2022, 1:23 pm

No, not a reference to a high-earning porn star, but the cost of a boundary dispute.

The Claimants sued their neighbours for trespass, claiming that they had encroached onto their land by a whopping 9 inches. Expert surveyors were instructed, and the case went to trial.

The Claimants lost, and will have to pay both their own costs and those of their neighbours, estimated at a total of £200,000.

Another stark warning of the dangers of litigation :shock:

https://www.civillitigationbrief.com/20 ... expensive/

Nimrod103
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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475236

Postby Nimrod103 » January 21st, 2022, 11:10 pm

While the newsworthiness of this is all about the obscene costs of the legal process in the UK, personally I would be interested in what the dispute was actually about. A plan and pictures would be useful. It is a shame that property boundaries in the UK are often unclear. If only each property came with a large scale plan, diagrams and perhaps photos ahowing the main demarcation points.

Mike4
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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475240

Postby Mike4 » January 21st, 2022, 11:38 pm

I had an employee (let's call him Martin) about 30 years ago who did exactly the same. His neighbour demolished a boundary fence and erected a new one 12" onto Martin's land, so Martin claimed. Martin was (was!) an asset-rich, relatively cash poor man owning a house in St George's Hills, Weybridge (not far from where George Harrison lived) with about 2 acres of land and the supposed encroachment was trivial.

Martin took it to law, mortgaging his house to pay a similar level of fees. Everyone argued with him about the wisdom but Martin was stubborn man insisting "it was the principle" not the actual land he was arguing about. Martin lost the case and later, lost the house when he fell behind with the mortgage payments.

Expensive things, principles, sometimes.

Lootman
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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475242

Postby Lootman » January 21st, 2022, 11:47 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:While the newsworthiness of this is all about the obscene costs of the legal process in the UK, personally I would be interested in what the dispute was actually about. A plan and pictures would be useful. It is a shame that property boundaries in the UK are often unclear. If only each property came with a large scale plan, diagrams and perhaps photos showing the main demarcation points.

The physical deeds of my property do not have a diagrammatic map of the property boundaries. Rather it is described verbally and rather ponderously. But does the land registry not have a cartographic representation of land parcels?

Of course in practice it is fences that become the de facto boundaries. My neighbour suggested to me that my fence be replaced by a much taller fence. I did not agree to that but indicated that I had no objection to him building his own, taller fence adjacent to my fence.

He did that whereupon I removed my fence, giving me about 2 extra feet for the entire length of my back garden, which is about 200 feet long.

Land in London is easily worth about £100 per square foot, so my gain of 400 square feet is theoretically worth about £40,000!

Mike4
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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475244

Postby Mike4 » January 21st, 2022, 11:54 pm

Lootman wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:While the newsworthiness of this is all about the obscene costs of the legal process in the UK, personally I would be interested in what the dispute was actually about. A plan and pictures would be useful. It is a shame that property boundaries in the UK are often unclear. If only each property came with a large scale plan, diagrams and perhaps photos showing the main demarcation points.

The physical deeds of my property do not have a diagrammatic map of the property boundaries. Rather it is described verbally and rather ponderously. But does the land registry not have a cartographic representation of land parcels?

Of course in practice it is fences that become the de facto boundaries. My neighbour suggested to me that my fence be replaced by a much taller fence. I did not agree to that but indicated that I had no objection to him building his own, taller fence adjacent to my fence.

He did that whereupon I removed my fence, giving me about 2 extra feet for the entire length of my back garden, which is about 200 feet long.

Land in London is easily worth about £100 per square foot, so my gain of 400 square feet is theoretically worth about £40,000!


Meanwhile, you hope he did not save photographic and other evidence of where the old fence was!

Lootman
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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475245

Postby Lootman » January 21st, 2022, 11:57 pm

Mike4 wrote:
Lootman wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:While the newsworthiness of this is all about the obscene costs of the legal process in the UK, personally I would be interested in what the dispute was actually about. A plan and pictures would be useful. It is a shame that property boundaries in the UK are often unclear. If only each property came with a large scale plan, diagrams and perhaps photos showing the main demarcation points.

The physical deeds of my property do not have a diagrammatic map of the property boundaries. Rather it is described verbally and rather ponderously. But does the land registry not have a cartographic representation of land parcels?

Of course in practice it is fences that become the de facto boundaries. My neighbour suggested to me that my fence be replaced by a much taller fence. I did not agree to that but indicated that I had no objection to him building his own, taller fence adjacent to my fence.

He did that whereupon I removed my fence, giving me about 2 extra feet for the entire length of my back garden, which is about 200 feet long.

Land in London is easily worth about £100 per square foot, so my gain of 400 square feet is theoretically worth about £40,000!

Meanwhile, you hope he did not save photographic and other evidence of where the old fence was!

Ha, well maybe he did although I doubt it, knowing him as I do.

Of course I won't really find out until we sell the place, whereupon it will no longer be my problem.

88V8
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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475283

Postby 88V8 » January 22nd, 2022, 10:46 am

On most plot plans the boundary demarcation line is so thick that a foot either way is imponderable.

Our cottage is surrounded by the farmer's grazing, with old and new boundary hedges. When new in 1620 there would not have been a fence, just the thorn hedges some of which remain, but on the whole these have of course not been maintained in a stockproof fashion.
One can see that when the fence posts have rotted, the farmer being unable to string a new wire fence through the hedge has perforce to erect a higgeldy piggeldy new fence further out, thus over the years our garden has expanded on three sides.
Which is nice.

However, since moving here, to keep his boisterous bullocks at bay we have ourselves erected new fences on three sides (even further out). One day when we are no longer here, these in turn will rot, and there will arise the question of who pays for replacements, a matter on which the deeds are silent.

Perhaps unusually, our previous house - 1921 - specified in the covenants that we were responsible for the fencing, and that it must be a three-strand barbed wire fence, the land at that time being bordered by grazing on two sides. It seems strange to me that deeds do not state who is responsible for each boundary.

V8

Clitheroekid
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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475453

Postby Clitheroekid » January 22nd, 2022, 10:57 pm

Lootman wrote:But does the land registry not have a cartographic representation of land parcels?

Yes, they do, but the plans are drawn to a relatively small scale, and the line representing the boundary is often several feet wide on the ground. In any case, the Land Registry plan only shows what's known as the `general boundary'. It's not supposed to be exact.

There's a reasonable explanation here - https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018 ... oundaries/

Or a much more detailed one here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... pplement-3

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Re: 9 inches = £200,000

#475519

Postby gryffron » January 23rd, 2022, 11:33 am

88V8 wrote: It seems strange to me that deeds do not state who is responsible for each boundary.

In general no-one is "responsible" for a boundary. It's just a line. Commonly, there is no "obligation" to maintain any sort of boundary fence or even physical marker. Unless the deeds state otherwise - and even then it can be quite hard to enforce.

Deeds for more recent housing estates often indicate who "owns" the boundary line. But since nothing prevents either side from placing their own fence up to that boundary line, even that doesn't necessarily imply "ownership" or "responsibility" for the fence. It's only really useful for the original builder-positioned fence, or if no other means exists to establish ownership (commonly the case where the fence has been present longer than the residents)

Gryff


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