Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Maybe, but there are provisions in the California Streets & Highways Code that, at least in some instances, give control or ownership of trees lining a street or highway to the authority maintaining the street or highway. Also, the land between a sidewalk and a curb may actually be part of the public right-of-way by ownership, or by an easement giving control over plantings. The bottom line is that you'll need to correspond with the city, county, etc. which maintains the street to get its opinion, preferably in writing.

I live on a county road, and my property line runds down the middle of the road. There are big trees lining the road, and when one loses a branch or falls across the road in a storm, the county assumes responsibility. My neighbor who has lived here much longer than I and also has trees along the road says the trees are the county's.

Mr. Whipple assumption is correct. from my knowledge as an ex-Deputy city attorney in Oakland, the sidewalk planter area trees you are speaking of where put in by the public entity, can be trimmed by them, and are their responsibility although they try to shift the liability to the homeowner. When the tree roots lift up the cement sidewalk squares and someone trips and fall, the public entity is the one sued, demonstrating that they own the tree as otherwise they would automatically cross-complain against the property owner for being the owner of the cause of incident.

You need to contact the local public entity to get their approval to both remove and put in another tree.

Incidentially, for most public roads, the public entity not only owns the roadway but claims an easement form the center of the roadway out to a certain distance. Normally it is about two car lanes wide as to both sides. But the actual roadway middle and the deeded in one are often not the same. The easement could stop right at your front fence, or it could go 20" onto what you view as being your property. Since you are not allowed to erect any permanent structure on such as easement, you will sometime see, especially on upslope lots in the hill areas, very few homes as a builder can not afford to dig 20' into the hillside and put up retaining walls to hold up the rest of the now exposed slope.

The previous answers are correct. The short simple version is - call the public entity that owns the road and work with them about it.