When we moved to our current home 13 years ago, a fence was in place near our stable that had been there for at least a decade or more. The original owner of the property when it was subdivided was living next door, and accepted that fenceline as the property line.

We subsequently replaced the old fence, and kept the same fence line, also extending it to the back of the property to create pasture for our horses. No one has ever questioned our claim to this corner of the property for the 13 years we have lived there. The current owner, however, had his land surveyed and is claiming that portion of land as his. We feel that according to adverse possession laws, that corner of land is, by law, ours.

Additonally, when performing the survey, the company surveying our neighbor's land came on to OUR land, into our woods, without permission, on the boundary opposite the land being surveyed and drove stakes into our trail through the woods as well as painting trees and drilling bore holes in rocks and stone walls.

Is this not considered to be criminal trespass, since the boundary they were surveying was NOT the boundary shared by the property supposedly being surveyed?

I don't think it si criminal trespass, just unauthorized entry onto property. If you feel you can quiet title to the boundary, go for it as you would be in privity with the former owner and the usage has meant the open, continuous, exclusive, adverse, notorious requirements for adverse possession. Consult an attorney, or file it on your own.

Thanks for the reply. Our neighbor hired an attorney, who sent us a "cease and desist" letter and ordered us to remove our fence. We have engaged the services of an attorney ourselves, who has sent a letter to our neighbor's attorney, outlining our claim for adverse possession.

Both the attorney and I think that our neighbor did not tell his attorney the whole story, since the letter we were sent stated that we should remove our "new" fence from "his" property. The fence is not new, but my husband was replacing posts that had begun to rot and he, therefore, had taken down a good portion of the old fence to check posts and replaced it temporarily with t-posts and hot wire.

I provided our attorney with satellite photos from Terraserver.com showing our fenceline in place in 1995, which is as far back as their archives go, as well as state DEM aerial photos showing the same fenceline in place as of 2003-2004. Our attorney thought that these photos were good evidence to add to our claim.

He has suggested that whether or not the neighbor decides to drop the matter or pursue it, we should file our claim in court in order to have the disputed portion legally deeded to us.