Well, your wall was exactly where it should have been. Exactly. Meaning Brent hadn’t just moved the boundary a little. He’d shoved it four full feet onto my land. Now, here’s where things could have ended peacefully. If Brent had just used common sense, I could have walked over with the survey results. We could have had an adult conversation.
Maybe his contractors would shift the design a bit. Inconvenience, sure, but manageable. So, I tried that first. I walked over with the survey report and knocked on his door. Brent answered, wearing sunglasses and holding what looked like a contractor’s site plan. I handed him the paperwork. Professional survey, I said.
The property lines exactly where the wall used to be. He skimmed the first page, maybe 5 seconds, then handed it back like it was a restaurant menu he didn’t like. Yeah, I don’t really agree with that. You ever hear a sentence so ridiculous your brain needs a second to process it? I don’t agree with that. Like property lines were a political opinion.
Brent, I said slowly. This is a licensed survey. While the contractors already poured the pool frame, he replied, gesturing toward the backyard. And moving everything now would be a nightmare. Translation: This problem is inconvenient for me, therefore it must not exist. So that’s when I stopped trying to solve it neighbor to neighbor because from a legal perspective, once someone has been informed they’re encroaching and they keep building anyway, the court tends to lose patience very quickly.
That afternoon, I met with a real estate attorney. Her name was Dana. I explained everything. The demolished wall, the fence, the pool deck creeping into my yard. She looked through the survey report, nodded once, and said something that honestly made me feel a lot better. Oh, this is going to be easy.
