Boundary Disputes

Resolving boundary disputes. Protecting your land.

Understanding where your property begins and ends shouldn’t be a source of stress. Yet boundary disputes can create complex challenges for property owners, whether residential, commercial or agricultural.

Boundary disputes often involve queries as to the extent of land owned, ownership of a boundary feature or structure, obligations relating to repair and maintenance and liability to contribute and physical extent of easements.

Contributing factors to boundary disputes include:

• Boundary positions changing
• Encroachment
• Unclear property deeds
• Adverse possession

Our property dispute lawyers have extensive expertise to deal with even the most complex of situations.  We have experience in dealing with matters in the court and tribunal but also by alternative dispute resolution such as mediation to resolve disputes.

In addition to boundary disputes we deal with the following related matters:

Adverse Possession

Adverse Possession occurs where there has been a trespass over a long period of time without any objection from the landowner. This has a potential result of the ‘squatter’ to displace that owner and claim the land for itself.

Adverse Possession comes up in boundary disputes because an encroachment across a boundary results in a trespass and this trespass can potentially go undetected for years.

Rights of Way

Queries as to the physical extent of a right of way involve considerations as to boundaries.

The Party Wall Act 1996

Boundary disputes often involve ‘party walls‘ or ‘party structures’ and can therefore come within the ambit of the Party Wall Act 1996.

The Party Wall Act 1996 provides a framework for resolving disputes between neighbours over building works that involve:

• Building or demolishing a party wall or structure
• Carrying out repairs to a party structure
• Excavating a site up to six metres from neighbouring buildings.

Often this mechanism will be appropriate as a means of resolving boundary disputes.

For more information on this, see our pages on Party Wall Disputes.

Nuisance

 The transmission of noise, smells and other disturbances from neighbouring properties are the source of many disputes between neighbours.