My grandma used to say, “Always make sure you get along with your neighbors.” And even if you don’t, always try to talk about it first. That’s what most people do, as 49% of Americans who have had a dispute with their neighbors say that they discussed the issue first. However, that strategy sometimes fails.
That was the case for this family, who had to get the landlord and the police involved to get their entitled neighbors to stop parking in their driveway. At a loss for what else to do, the homeowner asked netizens for advice on how to deal with difficult neighbors when the authorities aren’t willing to help.
An entitled guy wouldn’t stop parking in his neighbors’ driveway
Image credits: DragonImages/Envato (not the actual photo)
As he had to share his driveway with other neighbors, he felt this family should share theirs as well
Image credits: GSR-PhotoStudio/Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: LightFieldStudios/Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Accomplished-Cod8263
A couple of days later, the woman posted an update
Image credits: Cameron Tidy/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Three days into building the new fence, the woman believed she reached a tiny breakthrough with the neighboring family. She details how the mother asked her permission to take their trashcan down the driveway one last time before the fence is finished.
“I know [that’s] not a huge victory but it is the literal first time anyone from that family has asked anything or even been a little polite,” u/Accomplished-Cod8263 wrote. “I see it as a hopeful sign. Maybe this last act of grace will soothe some of their resentments so the war can end (if not, we are still on our toes).”
People started wondering if the wife was the voice of reason in the neighbor’s family and only the hot-headed husband and their son were the ones who wanted this whole beef. The Redditor mentions how the mom attempts to discipline the kids, but usually gives up after they don’t listen.
“Mom: ‘Do you want the neighbors to call the cops on us? Don’t throw rocks at their house,’” she details a supposed conversation. Kid: ‘We aren’t hurting anything,’ mom goes inside, kid doesnt skip a beat and continues to throw rocks.”
The mother also mentioned a possible reason why the neighbors’ kid was using their driveway to put the trashcan there. “Supposedly the upstairs neighbor kid is afraid of the downstairs neighbor dog ([can’t] imagine why seeing as he was throwing rocks at the poor thing) and [didn’t] want to cross the dogs path to put the trashcan out,” the Redditor wrote.
“It was news to me but she mentioned it when she asked my husband to let the boy do it one last time. Theoretically, they will now move their trash to their own driveway and not have to pass the dog at all. So still not our problem going forward.”
In some cases, homeowners sign an easement agreement, letting neighbors access their driveway
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Shared driveways do exist, but in this story, the OP’s family has their own driveway. Usually, when two neighbors are sharing a driveway, they sign an easement, an agreement between the two parties that allows them to use the driveway to access their properties. So, in this story, what the neighbors are doing is trespassing, because there’s no driveway easement between the OP’s family and the neighbors.
With an easement, according to estate planning and business attorney’s at Cutler and Riley, “the entire driveway is owned by one neighbor but the other neighbor has an easement over the driveway (a right to use the driveway).”
Still, the owners of the driveway can prohibit their neighbors from accessing it. It’s still their property, and if the neighbor is blocking the owner’s access to their home, they can be held accountable. In this case, the neighbor can’t interfere with reasonable use of the driveway.
If the neighbors really need to use that driveway and aren’t just being jerks about it out of entitlement, they could ask the OP for an easement. Yet it doesn’t seem they’d do that; the father and son seem to be more inclined towards vandalism and delinquency.
In the end, the family decided to put up a fence to hopefully stop the neighbors’ trashy behavior
People’s reactions were mixed: some sympathized with the family, others called them ‘doormats’ for letting the situation to get this bad
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