Who Owns The Fence Between Us?

So you and your neighbor have a fence between the two of you, who is responsible for maintaining it? Is it the person who put it up in the first place? What if neither one of you were around when the fence was constructed? What if you want to replace it, can you compel your neighbor to pay for half? These are all tricky questions because it’s the intersection of ownership (he who buys it, owns it) and property boundaries (in theory, if the fence is constructed exactly correctly, it’ll be 50% on your property and 50% on your neighbors).

In general, unless you make special arrangements with your neighbor (in writing, if you plan on enforcing it), you both own the fence and you are both responsible for maintaining it. In face, you aren’t allowed to take it down or replace it without getting permission from your neighbor (though I suspect you wouldn’t get much argument if you wanted to replace it and pay for it entirely yourself). If you neighbor refuses to maintain their part of the fence, you do have some legal recourse but this is one of those situations where talking about it usually can resolve it pretty quickly. Most people aren’t that much of a pain about fences since they get as much utility out of them as you do and generally have a strong sense of what’s right and wrong about them - less of a judgment call.