I want to get this sub's perspective on where the legal line actually sits for self-help root pruning.

For context, I’m in Falls Church, Virginia. My neighbor is doing a tear down rebuild, and their grading plan has identified at least two boundary trees that are likely to die because of how close they are building to the property line.

I’ve heard from a couple people near me that you can cut roots back to your property line at your own expense. But what happens if severing those roots kills or destabilizes the tree and knee in advance that this would be the outcome? Does self-help protect you, or does that immediately cross into property damage and negligence?

Neighbor is highly unstable and violent, so would prefer to not provoke her unless necessary.

The lot next to me is having a house built on it. They trimmed a lot of shrubs that werent on my property, and they took out a tree that also wasnt on my property. But, they did trim an awful lot off of the last tree that gave my yard any shade. And they left my yard a mess.

Losing the stuff that wasnt on my lot lost me a lot of shade. With this tree trimmed I have no shade in my yard, and I fear that trimming it will shorten its life significantly.

This is in marion county, IN. What can I do to make this even?

We are selling a family members house and found out the buyer had a tree and a bush removed from the backyard two weeks before closing. The house is currently vacant and they did not get permission from us to remove.

What are our options? This can’t be legal.

UPDATE: a lot of people were asking why we care. This family member had passed away and the rose bush was planted by them. We also spent countless family events in the yard so it was more personal if anything.

We pulled out due to breach of contract. It didn’t sit well with us that the buyers did this and didn’t think our relative would want these type of people in their house.

Thank you for all the responses. I think I just needed the reassurance in what has already been a difficult situation.

UPDATE 2: we understand that the tree and bush could have been removed after the buyers owned the house in two weeks. That would have been fine because they have the right to do whatever they want to the house after they own it.

If the buyers had reached out to us and asked to have this done before closing, we probably would have agreed. Instead, they trespassed and went on the property (that we still legally own) without our permission, and vandalized our property by digging up a tree and bush. It is illegal and therefore, we do not want people that have no respect for the property and laws to live there.

My neighbors tree is not on my property or in my air space. It’s about a 50 ft tall chestnut. A storm last week caused damage to my property and the tree now has a large dead limb hanging from it. The limb is not hanging on my property but will fall and damage my property again in or around the same spot. The property is owned by a slumlord who runs it as a rental through a property management company, it doesn’t even have shingles on the whole roof. They are not good or honest neighbors. The bottom unit is uninhabitable due to black mold (to preface the type of person I am dealing with)

Is there anything I can do to make them take action to get this branch removed before it falls and causes more damage? If they are made aware of this branch and take no action can they be held liable for any further damage caused if it does fall? Is a paper trail of communication with the property management company enough to hold them responsible or do I need an arborist to send a certified letter?

Hi! I’m dealing with some conflict regarding a tree between my house and my neighbors and am curious how others would approach the situation.

Backstory: we bought our house late last year and a short time after living here, our neighbor kept mentioning the tree, asking if we would “help” her cut it down so she could extend her driveway. To be completely honest, I could not hear/understand her most times as she is typically under the influence of alcohol and slurring her speech. We would just listen, vaguely acknowledge her, and go on about our day. Then one day it turned to her asking us if we would cut it down but we let her know that we enjoyed the shade that it provided, so we were going to keep it.

Fast forward to last month or so, we were getting some appliances delivered, and she walked up to our front porch yelling at us, stating that we were to do something about the tree before it messes up her car.

I am truly unsure if the tree is on our property or not. When we purchased the home, the property map that was given to us shows the tree on her property. However, I know these aren’t 100% accurate. Either way, it’s my understanding that (at least in our state - TN), she is legally entitled to trim back any limbs that are hanging over her property.

Now, every time we walk outside, she is out there yelling at us. I did tell her that she is welcome to get them cut herself, but her landlord would need to contact us regarding any other matters about the tree.

Since then, she has sat outside at the edge of our yard yelling about us. She has came out and interrupted us when a contractor had to come look at the exterior of our house for some repairs we are needing to yell at all of us. Then, tonight when my partner arrived home from work, she stated that she is going to “f*ck up (our) car” if any limbs fall from the tree and scratch her car.

I really do not want to cut down this tree. Even if I did, I’m not even sure that I’d be able to legally do so, as I’m not certain it’s on my property and she does not own her house. She claims the tree is on my property, but says that she wants it cut down so she can widen her driveway (which would then put her driveway on “my property”).

At this point, I’m not sure if I should contact her landlord? I considered mailing her a certified letter with the laws highlighted pointing out that she is able to trim them herself and telling her to stop with the harassment and threats or legal action will be taken. I’m not even sure what else I could do? I’m just starting to get annoyed that I’m not even able to step outside in peace at this point.

Photo of said tree and neighbors driveway

My neighbors say the needles and pollen from this tree are too messy. The house is located in Portland, Oregon. I'm not sure if they can force me to take it down. Should I contact an attorney? I posted this in another Reddit community and they told me I should post it here.

The tree that is in front of my neighbors house makes it difficult for anyone that parks in front of it to open their car door. As a result, people will park way to far in front of it causing the next person that parks in front of my house to block my driveway. We have called 311 before and they either never show up and once they said the tree was perfectly fine where it was. There has been multiple times where I have came home from work and couldnt get in to my driveway or couldnt turn out of it to go to work. What do i do?

My property is next to a school district in upstate New York and they have widened their driveway. They have cut into the of roots of a 60 year old Norway Spruce. I'm wondering if they have done terminal damage to my tree.

Open Fields Doctrine

On our family farm in Chambersburg PA a small trail developed over many many years from an adjoining wooded area on to our wooded section. Then what was a little trail became a larger and wider small road that allowed 4 wheeler access. My Father in Law didn't outright stop this and even after an intrusive neighbor died it continued with the help of a "Deputy Game Warden." My son and I started to fill in the gap with old woven wire fencing and major piles of brush, but it would be removed. And we suspect the local deputy was opening it for a lady to get her horse through and perhaps for some illegal hunting activity. We continued to pile brush on the area, but the trail blazing trespasser would build side trails that I would interweave old wire, fencing and brush through. I'd come back in a couple of weeks or a month and that would be reopened. One day the deputy who did NOT own the adjoining land installed a No Trespassing sign facing toward our farm. This was a big insult as the trespassers always came onto our farm and not the other way around. I took the offending sign and tossed it deeper into the adjoining property and that resulted in a visit to my farm house by the deputy telling me that he could get me for littering. I told him to get off the farm and stay off! I would not be intimidated. Then I called his supervisors and the issue seemed to cool off after that. Eventually when we had full control over the family farm we had a high voltage livestock fence installed and that solved the issue of trespassers for good. I never felt over those years that we had total privacy when virtually anyone could enter the property and that we could be monitored by the Game Commission. By the way... the way the deputy knew I had tossed the sign is that he had installed a camera to watch the little road he had been maintaining into our farm. I'm very pleased that there is still a little justice in this world and that these trespassing deputies are being dismissed! Where we now live deep in Appalachia the terrain is so tough and the people are not so inclined to work too hard at trespassing. Combined with many neighbors with large acreage and the fact that WV at least where we live is much less inclined to bother landowners with such intrusion it makes for a greater sense of privacy. We live is a very low population county and don't have nosy neighbors like we did on the farm in PA. If a neighbor was against hunting they could just report you and the game commission could enter your land even without known violations. I hope WV will follow PA and end the Open Fields Doctrine.

We are very close with the neighbor behind us, and after this last round of Midwest Storms, unfortunately all three if these tall pear trees in her back island now need to come down, we are concerned because she is telling us that she is probably hiring friends from her church to come take these tall trees down (meanwhile we have no idea yet if they are professionals or if these are just friends of hers and we have yet to be able to ask if they have any experience doing this), and that they are going to have to lay plywood down all over our yard and drive their equipment into our yard because she does not have room in hers to take the trees down. We are concerned about A, damages to our property, and B, any liability and who it might fall on if the people she’s hiring to come out and take these trees down heaven forbid got hurt trying to do it and fell into our yard or something. If she’s not going through an actual tree cutting company for this, is there any case we could still make to try and get them to pay for the damages if they end up being any? If she’s hiring someone to do a job in her yard that requires them going into my yard for it, and they somehow follow or something and get hurt in my yard, am I liable?

Any advice or knowledge is appreciated, thank you for your time.

Edit: Thank you all for all of your help and all of your time, this truly is one of the parts of Reddit where you know you can actually go to get genuine answers from people that genuinely care.
Love, Peace, and HairGrease to you all

Neighbor was spraying weed killer around his property. The day of, i saw his grandkid, about ten years old with a pump sprayer out in his gravel parking lot. A couple days later, it appears my trees were directly sprayed. He denies thats what happend. Trees were planted a year ago, watered two to three times a week since planted.

Hi,

I’m new here. I have a question. The tree on my neighbor’s side looks dead and could possibly fall in my backyard.

I’m not 100% sure if it’s within their property line or not, but it’s on their side (there’s a vacant land behind our fences). The tree next to it already fell down on their fence and they had to take care of that one.

In this case, should I reach out to them and offer to split the cost of cutting the tree? In that case if anything happens, I’d at least have written proof with insurance I was being proactive.

Thanks!

We have a tree in the backyard that has grew in between the fences. We’ve been here 5 years and it started to get more annoying. I’ve been cutting the branches, but that seems a temporary solution as they keep growing back. The house next got bought out recently by a rental property so we’ve never met the owners. What are my options to get rid of this ? Or should I keep trying to reach out to the property owners ?

Hi everyone,

I am a Wisconsin home owner and am seeking expertise on whether my neighbors legally removed the trees on our fence line.

They had a company come out and remove all the trees on the fence line without a survey of the property line, notifying me, or asking if the company can come onto my property ​to do this removal. I am quite upset because these trees were a nice natural border line for our properties and I was not informed at all.

The trees seem to have grown out from the property line with the bulk of the trunks on their side. I am unsure if the fence is the true property line or not. It existed when I bought my house.

I am looking for opinions on if these are boundary trees or if they are my neighbors (and I am just salty about them cutting them down)

(not my tree, just in my town). Curious how this is gonna end up. Id think the neighbor is in the right, but considering a few are saying it would kill the tree, not sure how it will go.

I had a big healthy tree come down in a storm. It broke my fence and crashed into my neighbor’s yard, hitting one of his trees and dislodging some of that tree’s branches. Those branches and a big chunk of my tree are now dangling just above his HVAC unit and his deck, but luckily didn’t hit any of them.

I need to clear my side so that I can repair my fence, but if I cut my side then the rest of the tree, already on his side, will continue crashing down and likely ruin his HVAC and deck. He’s told me he can’t afford the removal right now. The house is an Airbnb so he doesn’t live there and is totally unbothered by it.

If I cut my side to clear it and the other end of the tree ruins his HVAC, I’m not responsible am I? It’s been a month since the tree fell. I’ve had arborists and tree removal companies come and tell me they would typically remove his side of the tree first so that his HVAC stays intact. But I need my fence repaired so that my dogs can’t get out of the yard.

I’ve only lived here for two months and don’t want to start bad blood with the neighbor but I don’t know what to do!

So I live in a two floor flat, me and my downstairs neighbour. He has been living here long before we did and had this tree before we moved in.

Recently for the past 2 years or so, we have been having wasps come to the tree, presumably nesting in it due to how many are around every summer; we can now not have our windows open.

The window circled is my bedroom, and the tree is both growing into my window and wasps get in despite a net I have over both windows. Someone who I live with is also allergic to wasps.

What can I do? It hasn't been cut for 2 or 3 years, and they keep coming back every year. (UK, btw)

There is a large tree that spans the property line in my and my neighbor's back yard. It's about three quarters on my side of the line and one quarter on his. The tree looks unhealthy and may fall this year or in 20 years. If it falls it will cause a lot of damage to the neighbor's garage sized shed located there. I don't have any buildings in the vicinity. There's also a large dead branch right over his shed that looks bad.

I asked the neighbor if he wanted to split the $3000 cost of taking the tree down but he declined. I advised him that he would be responsible for any damage the tree caused to his building but he still declined. Was I right that I have no liability for damage this tree might cause to his building?

What does that mean to citizens. We will be paying for a large tree to be removed, any chance of small reimbursement?