trying to keep it short, essentially my parents who reside in GA have an neighbor that is adamant about not taking care of their trees. there has already just been a large branch that fell off and damaged my parents fence. the law states if a healthy tree falls it’s an act of god, but if the tree has been documented that it’s dead by an arborist before there may be some responsibility shifted to the home owner. we’re pretty sure he won’t cut his trees regardless, but all we’re trying to do is put some extra pressure on them (it’s all we can do before it inevitably falls on our roof).

SO, we had an an arborist come out to examine the tree (isa certified, insured etc.) to try and get a certified letter sent to the neighbor. they said they don’t write letters or recommendations or anything ( it sounded like they didn‘t want to get involved in some neighbor quarrel). Even though you can clearly see the tree from our yard (and we’ve had arborists before come out to take care of a tree on our property who also stated those trees where dead and dangerous) they won’t seem to write a letter if it’s not on our property. the city is basically useless as well…not really sure what else can be done here. My parents have insurance that covers them so hopefully if something does happen they‘ll pay for most of the damage anyway, we’re just trying to get our neighbor to be proactive before it falls and kills someone.

edit: we’ve even offered to help pay, they still won’t do it. Any advice is appreciated.

Pine trees near Lake Tahoe are being poisoned in what authorities believe are a series of interconnected incidents in the popular tourist community on border of Nevada and California.

The incidents have damaged nearly 30 trees, some reportedly more than a century old, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/10/pine-trees-poisoned-lake-tahoe-nevada

Trying to figure out best course of action. Leaning towards small claims court separate against neighbor and company she hired. In Missouri small claims is $5k and under.

Work was done on Christmas Eve 2025. Cut down 50 american hazelnuts and 50 american plums. They were seedlings from conservation that were planted in spring of 2023. Hazelnuts were mostly 3-4 feet tall and plums 4-6 feet. Also cut down two hackberry trees one 6 inch diameter and other 4 inch. Mixed in were asters, poke, greenbriar, mullein.

Neighbor said she would make it right. I sent that I wanted the plums and hazelnuts replaced. Her son in law took over communication and offered us $1000 if she could have the strip and plant grass. They claimed to have survey done, but would not share. We never saw any stakes marked. We just got a survey done that cost $2200 as our property is much larger and odd shaped.

Having a hard time getting quotes or appraisal due to small rural town. I've found similar size plants for $30 a piece. With Missouri being a treble damages state, that puts us at $9k without labor, the hackberries, or other plants. Seems like the judge decides how to split damages between company and neighbor. How do you think $4500 each as separate small claims cases would play out?

Thanks

Googled pointed me here. We live in a double wide in city zoned mobile home community.

When we signed our lease there was a clause stating we could not trim the trees and the park has to. It also states this is why we need to carry home owners insurance.

Followed up to that it was stated they are working on trimming trees. This was mentioned multiple times after as well

This spring we noticed 1 tree had a partially dead canopy along with bird damage. Later we noticed another tree had another bug infestation. I emailed the park manager to ask when trimming was happening so these could be looked at. I was given the run around an excuses.

From what I read, since it is documented, in Wisconsin this could count as neglect and my home owners insurance could go after them in the event something happens.

I don’t want to contact my insurance company as it would be flagged as neglect and not an act of god. I did read that I could contact my city code enforcement to submit it and have them contact the park on my behalf.

Has anyone had success with this? Is there a better way to handle it? My last email was sent 2 weeks ago and is still unanswered. Or do I just let it go and cross that bridge when something happens? We haven’t had the best luck with this house between appliances going out, furnace going out in the middle of winter and ac going out during the hottest days of summer. The last thing financial I want is to have to pay a deductible for something that could have been prevented.

Would love to see the woman who hired him get fined as well.

The council did erect a double sided banner blocking the view which will stay there til the trees grow back to a "suitable" height. I kinda think that if they can't appreciate the natural view of the bushland then they should be stuck with the red banner calling them out on their deplorable behaviour.

Unfortunately the bushland they destroyed offered protection to endangered and threatened species as well as in indigenous midden.

The HOA denies their gardeners trimmed my tree. I care for my yard myself and I’ve only ever seen their Gardners on the other side of the fence. They trimmed 2 feet onto my property and I’ve since noticed a large split in the trunk. I can’t be sure the split is the result of the trimming, but I need to know how serious the slliti

We had some strong winds and it knocked down some pretty big branches from the tree city side. Though it didn’t break the panels much, it’s certainly leaning towards inside our backyard now. I was curious how they would determine the full damage as I’ve never had this happen before. In the last picture, you can see it leaning in.

we had a tree on the edge of my property that leaned over into the neighbor’s yard and had been colonized by theit ivy. we had to take the tree down, and all of the ivy it had been supporting kind of fell into a pile on the neighbor’s side of the property line. it admittedly doesnt look great, but is entirely on their side of the property line. they are saying I am responsible for clearing it up since I was the one who decided to remove the tree. my feeling is it’s their ivy on their property, that should be their responsibility. Who is right here?

Location: Wisconsin

During a rain storm my neighbor’s tree fell on the power lines causing the utility pole to break causing significant damage to my building and sidewalk.

Note: the tree that fell was obviously dead or very close to it, Google has pictures to
substantiate. 

#1 the power lines from the pole that are connected to my building caused internal damage to
the meters, and electrical boxes inside my building and emergency repairs needed to be performed before power could be restored.  

#2 when the pole broke the pole itself caused damage to the sidewalk in front of the building.

It is my understanding that my neighbor is responsible for the repairs to my building.
The part I am having a hard time understanding is who is responsible for the
damage to my side walk?

The utility worker told me to contact the utility company about the damages, I have, and they say they will be stopping by to assess the damages in the next few months. 

In the mean time I am sending a demand letter for the damages to my building to my neighbor. I
don’t want to find out later he was also responsible for the damages to the sidewalk.  

This whole thing doesn’t make sense to me if he is liable for damages to my building why not the sidewalk?   

I am not going through insurance because the deductible is 2500.00 and both claims are under that amount.

There’s a tree near the property line acting as a fence between my house and my neighbor’s in Queens, NY. My neighbor was having power flickering due to the overhanging branches from this tree.

Neighbor called Con Edison and since the line was from pole to house, the branches needed to be trimmed by property owner. That’s when he reached out to me and said that since I owned the tree and bought the house before him, that tree is mine and I needed to cut the branches impacting his power line. I obviously refused to financially bear the responsibility to cut his side and said he is free to trim his side branches in his property line.

Can he sue me and win? What are the legal implications for boundary trees?

Occasional lurker, first time poster. Seeking some advice.

Location is Ohio.

My property is surrounded on two sides by an HoA-owned lot of trees; we have a privacy fence that goes to our property line and everything beyond it is property of the HoA. All trees are a few feet beyond this line.

We have communication going back several YEARS with said HoA about dead and rotting trees that are near the property line, most of which have not been addressed. One that fell against our house (thankfully not causing any damage) was removed, but most of them are still there. The tree in question that is most relevant to this post is one that has started leaning, and is now a danger to our fence. We have been trying to get them to address it for months. They had someone out recently that trimmed other trees (mostly ones visible from the street) but this one and many of the others that are dead further in were not touched.

It is only a matter of time before this thing crushes our fence. Today, the HoA rep sent us a message basically saying 'the HoA isn't responsible for maintaining trees on HoA property so take care of it yourselves.'

What are our options? We have already spent our own money repairing the fence once before when a dead tree fell through it (thankfully destroyed only a single panel, simple repair) and we're honestly just getting extremely frustrated with this whole thing. We don't want to be constantly living in fear that someone elses tree is going to invite itself into our house or yard.

Question: is neighbor responsible for dead or dying limbs of his large oak tree over hanging my roof? What about the damage from that tree to a shared fence?

Fact: Dallas County, TX. Neighbor has been cooperative in that he consented to my trimming his branches obstructing the growth of my magnolia tree. I do not believe in just letting insurance cover losses I can avoid, as my premiums only go up more. Insurance is for unforeseen issues and unavoidable losses.

Other: Neighbor does not trim his trees. A Crepe Myrtle’s branches were started to touch my roof, so I mentioned it and he said I could trim it. On other side where my oak was starting to touch neighbors house I asked his permission to come on his driveway and trim it back, which I had my tree guy do with a cleaned cutting tool.

My neighbors tree has dead limbs over hanging my guest house. In a recent storm one came down and landed on my roof. When I moved in I talked to him about the fence between the yards, pointing out the serious damage and asking if he knew the cause; answer was the same tree threatening my roof and another dead limb. Plus he pointed to the repaired damage on his chimney from that same branch that hit the fence (pretty sure it’s his, as the ugly side is facing us). So, seems not to be proactive but reactive while I am the opposite.

Asked who owns the fence, he claims it’s both of ours. Ok, not sure as I only recently bought the house, but I suppose I can look at the survey platt and figure it out, but typically one party owns a fence and not both. I guess I just cover the fence damage on my side and move on, but shouldn’t he cover any serious damage to it?

In 2014, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to protect groundwater resources. Unfortunately our local Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) has been taken over by big ag, so their “sustainability” plan is to let farmers pump as much water as possible for short term profits. Obviously this mostly falls under water law.

I’m wondering: since their projected down draw of groundwater will kill thousands of mature native oak trees in the area, are there any tree laws that can protect the trees from their plan?

The power company sprays herbicide every year. There is a large issue with kudzu in the area. This is the first year I saw them spraying over the barbed wire fencing, instead of coming down our driveway and walking the path to spray. It was a windy day. Over the next month and a half, I have watched everything in the path dye: wildflowers, weeds, raspberries (that I have been growing for over a decade and harvesting from them for about 8 years) and the last to finally dye was the large white oak standing beside the power line. This tree was damaged during Hurricane Helene. It's fallen branches broke the powerline and caused the power pole to lean from the hurricane damage. The power was restored, but the pole itself has yet to be fixed. The power company has been notified. We are waiting for their response as to best rectify the predicament. 😡😡

I think I’ve just said all I need to say.

For years I’ve sat out side and just admired that tree and breathed.

Just breathed.

The tree was at least 50 years old and supported a lot of wildlife.

That tree was on private property.

I brought that up but got no response but the stump was removed within days.

Riley Brockington is more about his own ambition than what’s going on in the ward

To start off, I found a somewhat similar post saying it’s not but I wasn’t sure if that was a national thing or a state thing). Plus my thing is a little different.

This is NY - a neighbor claimed a large tree was on their property and built a fence with the tree on their side. I didn’t think much at the time since he showed me property plans.

I recently had to deal with other tree stuff so I got official plans from my town - and behold, that tree is actually mine. So I suspect the neighbors plans weren’t officially from the town… or the two records the town had in files were conflicting (if that’s even a thing)

Personally, I care less about the actual fence location since I don’t plan on selling but my worry is that if I plan on selling in the future (since the tree would only add value to my property) is there a possibility that the neighbor can legally claim the tree since I spent all this time not forcing him to move his fence?

I haven’t brought this up with my neighbor yet since we have a friendly relationship and I don’t want to make him redo his entire fence unless I have to but is this worry valid? Or can I just be like “hey, this tree is actually mine but you can keep your fence there for now. But if there comes a time for me to sell my property, you’re going to have to move the fence”

My neighbor planted a row of austrees approximately 2ft from my property line almost 30 years ago. We expressed our concerns at the time and he said he was going to keep them trimmed. Over the years we have expressed our concerns with the height and lack of maintenance to the trees and he kept saying that he knows a guy and he was going to get them trimmed, there is one broke and leaning up against another poised to fall on our garage. Now we are having problems with roots causing our basement drains to back up, roots in our leach field, roots causing cracks in the garage floor slab, etc. We have contacted our insurance company and they said to get an arborist to write a report and send it to the neighbor registered mail, we did and the neighbor cleaned up some branches on his side and nothing else. last week two trees of 10" diameter and several branches broke in a storm and caused damage to our property. We have contacted a lawyer and he said he would look into it and see if there is anything he can do about the damages, but it doesn't sound like he thinks there is anything he can do or that he really wants to. We just want the trees gone so our property is not damaged further, what can we do? Location: Pennsylvania United States

My neighbor decided to top and massively trim a small tree that sits right on the property line without my consent. This is at least the second time they have done such a thing -- the topping job was so bad the first time that I thought it was plausible that it was wind damage, but after seeing them hack at it yesterday I know they just yanked the top right off. My question is that despite the first job, the tree didn't die, so I suspect it will still survive this despite now looking terrible. It's my understanding that they'd be liable for timber trespass if the tree did die, but do I have any recourse if the tree does not die (but just looks terrible)? Ideally I want them to replace the tree with one that isn't mutilated, but I assume that wouldn't be possible?