Neighbor issues

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bscastro

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Dear friends,

I need a little advice on a situation that has happened with my neighbors. I’ll try to be concise:
  1. Since we’ve lived in our house (the last 7 years), our neighbors and we have been friendly towards each other. Not best of friends, but polite and courteous.
  2. The last couple years, our neighbors have been doing a lot of home additions and improvements on their house.
  3. Where the issues have been starting have involved the respect of the property line. They have repeatedly put tools and trailers so that they encroach (only by a few feet). For the most part, my wife and I have ignored it.
  4. However, last fall they were cutting down some trees between our house, and cut down a couple that fell on our side of the yard. We went over and said something about it, and in general we’ve gone over there maybe 2-3 times outside of our usual interactions with them to discuss little things like this - in a charitable manner.
  5. They had a section of their front yard where water pools up when it rains. Yesterday, they had a bunch of topsoil and they started flattening out their yard. My wife went over there (I wasn’t home) and told them that by changing the grade of their yard, the water might go over and pool in our yard.
Well, this is where we are. The husband through a tirade at my wife, swearing at her and telling her how we live like pigs and don’t keep up our yard, and then made racial slur (I’m asian but the slur was against black people). My wife just walked away, upset and a little afraid.

So what should I do? I wanted to just walk over and try to make peace in a friendly manner. On the other hand, I don’t want to be a doormat, which I don’t think I would be doing in this case. My wife is worried that he’ll either walk over me because he’s aggressive and intimidating or he’ll just punch me in the face. In a way, either one would provide some useful information I think.

Any advice would be welcome. Also, please pray for us.

God bless,
Bryan
 
Your city may have ordinances that would cover some of these issues. But I don’t think that just flattening out their yard so the water won’t pool could be a problem (legally). You can’t expect them to have a mess just so that you won’t. If water starts pooling in your yard, you’ll just have to take care of it.
 
Sorry if this sounds abrupt, but you need advice from a lawyer, not a bunch of strangers on a forum.
 
QUOTE=DaveBj;9444627]Sorry if this sounds abrupt, but you need advice from a lawyer, not a bunch of strangers on a forum.

👍

In UK with have an organisation called Citizens Advice Bureau and they give you step by step what to do in such situations. Hopefully there somethig similar where you live. All the advice and information is free. failing anything like that then as DaveB said, a lawyer. Write down everything that is happening to you in diary form. Any further comments between the neighbours etc. Keep a written record. Whenever you see them just be polite. If they swear at you, just give them a warm smile back. If they chuck stuff over or anything. Take a photo and log the photo into your diary but do not retailiate with anything. Just smile, and keep your cool. Don’t talk about them to anyone else (other than your priest perhaps but no one else). Make sure your sound levels ie, tv and radio are reasonable. Don’t be tempted to fight back in any way possible. Leave that to the lawyer to do. You both just give a warm smile and thats that.
 
Well, I guess I wanted to talk to them personally before taking legal actions.

In any case, things seem to have resolved themselves for now. We saw them at breakfast at the local diner this morning. He was very apologetic and his son told me how the wife had been hard on him for not getting all of the work done around the house, so I think he was just projecting on us.

He was very apologetic to my wife and I felt he was sincere. He also said if there were any problems with the drainage he would help us out and it was not his intent to cause any problems.

It is kind of funny, because I think there was some divine providence in this situation - meeting the husband and his son out at breakfast this morning. In any case, we’ll be living with our neighbors for years, so I want to be cordial and courteous.

God bless,
Bryan
 
bscastro said:
Well, I guess I wanted to talk to them personally before taking legal actions.

In any case, things seem to have resolved themselves for now. We saw them at breakfast at the local diner this morning. He was very apologetic and his son told me how the wife had been hard on him for not getting all of the work done around the house, so I think he was just projecting on us.

He was very apologetic to my wife and I felt he was sincere. He also said if there were any problems with the drainage he would help us out and it was not his intent to cause any problems.

It is kind of funny, because I think there was some divine providence in this situation - meeting the husband and his son out at breakfast this morning. In any case, we’ll be living with our neighbors for years, so I want to be cordial and courteous.

God bless,
Bryan
Click to expand...
👍 It is good that you did not escalate the situation by reacting immediately to his temper outburst at your wife. When it doubt, wait it out! You gain by not reacting in haste, but with prayer and discernment. Sometimes others just lose their tempers and make amends for it afterward. We are all human, after all.
 
DaveBj said:
👍

All’s well that ends well?
Click to expand...
Partly. One of the things I wanted to establish with our neighbor was that when we do have issues (which I’m sure we will in the future), we can discuss it and work on it knowing we mean well for each other. Also, I didn’t want us (and our neighbors) to hold our emotions in and then let them build up to these type of outbursts.

But praise God, as for now, it has ended well.

BTW, I also thought the situation was a good witness to Christian forgiveness.

Yours in Christ,
Bryan
 
bscastro said:
It is kind of funny, because I think there was some divine providence in this situation - meeting the husband and his son out at breakfast this morning. In any case, we’ll be living with our neighbors for years, so I want to be cordial and courteous.

God bless,
Bryan
Click to expand...
Good people make mistakes all the time. Most of them are not that apologetic, especially in front of their kids. He sounds like a really good guy.

I have to agree with one of the posters above though. You really can’t blame them for flattening their yard out. They do not have to deal with water pooling just so you don’t. I do think that your wife was out of line in going over to complain in the first place.

Oh well though, glad it all worked out.
 
My neighbors and I ran into some problems when they wanted to install a fence on the property line (they have small grandchildren,) and re-graded their yard. We talked it out, and then re-graded ours. Both husbands are handymen, and one weekend they rented a Ditch Witch, trenched out at the property line, and installed drain tile that runs to the drainage swayle that runs along the back of both property lines. The wife and I directed traffic, held up a couple of poles with a line to make sure they got the ditch dug straight, and provided plenty of cold beer and hot dogs. We split the cost of the work permit with the township, and the rental of the Ditch Witch and the cost of the drain tile, and the job (which was apparently needed anyways) got done in a weekend.

If we hadn’t both re-graded and trenched, we would both have ended up with water in our basements, according to the town engineer.

And even the fence looks nice. I hung potted geraniums on my side of the fence, and they give the yard a very Cape Cod look.

Ask St. Ignatius for the grace to think through all aspects of this, and try to find a solution where you both come out as winners! It can be done!
 
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