TIL that neighbor's legal advice about easements was completely backward

My neighbor Bob told me I had to let him drive across my back yard because he had a 'prescriptive easement' from the previous owner. Said he'd been doing it for 12 years and the law was on his side. I paid a real estate lawyer $300 to check it out, and turns out Bob was dead wrong - you need continuous use without permission for 20 years in my state. So I put up a fence last weekend. Has anyone else had a neighbor try to use legal terms they didn't understand?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugow305d ago

Funny how people throw around legal terms they heard somewhere once. I had a guy tell me I couldn't trim his tree branches hanging over my roof because it was "trespassing against nature" or something like that. The arborist just laughed and cut them anyway.

lewis.drew5d ago

Yeah, "trespassing against nature" is a new one on me. Pretty sure trees don't have lawyers.