Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

When it comes to real estate, verbal agreements aren't worth the paper they are written on.

The previous answer is too simplistic. Your oral agreement (lawyers prefer to call them "oral" rather than "verbal," because "verbal" only means "with words," which could be written or spoken words) was legally sufficient to create a license. A license, in legalese, is permission to use the real estate of another, without acquiring any ownership interest. Everyday license agreement situations include your ticket to a baseball game where you license the right to sit in Seat 44-F during today's game, or when you go to the airport and park your car in stall 44-F of the parking garage for a week while you're in Hawaii.

In addition to these everyday situations, people grant licenses in their property by various informal means for any number of purposes, including building stairs a couple inches over the property line.

The problem with licenses, from the standpoint of the licensee, is that the licensor can usually revoke the license simply by giving notice of the revocation. There are some limits on this right to revoke a license, which you might want to explore with a lawyer. However, I'd say that the neighbor is probably within her rights to revoke the license for the encroaching stairs.

This is not a situation where a prescriptive easement might arise, since the neighbor and you had an oral agreement. Prescriptive easements arise where the property owner has not agreed in any way to the adverse use of her property.

My original answer still stands. Mr. Whipple's examples all involve a writing, which is a ticket. Try to get your car out of airport parking without a ticket and you will realize the truth in my original statement.