Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Fence responsibility

Either go to the Find law.com site or the Nolo Press web site animate tell you. This is a tough problem in really is more realistic than legal. If both parties are not cooperative then basically a Small Claims Court to make a decision. The cost of litigation is minimal and no attorneys are either required or allowed, unless they are party. Therefore your decision would be made by a judge based upon his/her knowledge of the law of the jurisdiction. My opinion is no pay, no icons.

Re: Fence responsibility

First, the statutes on boundary fences are very brief and a bit old-fashioned, designed for 19th-Century rural situations rather than modern cities. Basically, they say that if a property owner decides to enclose his lands, he must share the cost of common-boundary fencing with each neighbor who also encloses his lands. The only other fence statute defines and limits so-called spite fences.

The statutes have been extended and interpreted in more modern situations. The most general concept is that a fence more or less exactly on the boundary is a joint undertaking and costs of installation and maintenance should be shared.

Unfortunately, I do not know of any publication, either for property owners or for lawyers, that could be used to show a neightbor the "black letter law" on boudary fences. There are probably some law review articles on the subject, but I can't cite them for you.

Most of the appellate decisions on boundary fences invoke common-sense rules based on the principles of common ownership where a fence exists, combined with the right of a property owner NOT to fence his lands at all, in which case he is not obliged to contribute to fence costs incurred by a neighbor who DOES enclose.

Further, I would say that if the fence were built entirely at your expense you should have complete control over anything affixed to or painted on it.