Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

That would depend entirely on who owns what legal rights in the driveway and whether the fence would interfere with them.

Mr. McCormick is right - it all depends. In general, one can erect a fence so long as it's completely on that person's property. However, if Conditions, Covenants & Restrictions (CC&Rs;) and/or homeowner association bylaws exist, those documents may include some restrictions on this sort of thing. Further, local building and safety codes will probably apply to the construction.

Good luck, and feel free to contact me if you have further questions.

Regards,

Tom Newton

I too agree with both prior answers, and have something to add. A shared driveway can mean any of the following (assume the neighbors are X and Y):

(1) The driveway is on X's property, and Y holds an easement to use it;

(2) The driveway is on Y's property, and X holds an easement to use it; or

(3) Part of the driveway is on X's property and part is on Y's property, and each has an easement to use the parts on the other guy's property.

There may be other possibilities as well.

In any event, the law of easements says that driveway and other access-type easements are not exclusive. i.e., either X or Y may make other uses of the parts of their property that are subject to the neighbor's easement rights PROVIDED that those other uses do not unduly interfere with the purposes of the easement. For example, X could build a fence parallel to the shared driveway on X's own land, but the fence cannot be so close to the portion of the easement that Y drives upon so that Y might scrape his car on the fence, or must drive at 3 MPH to be safe when he could formerly drive 5 MPH (for example).

The law of easements has a lot of rules and concepts that are based on ordinary fair play and reasonableness. Neither the holder of the easement nor the owner of the underlying land are allowed to jerk each other around in an unneighborly way.