Disputes between neighbors about property lines are common. You mow your lawn too far a few times and soon you might have an angry neighbor on your hands! The woman in this story, however, opened Pandora's box when she started planning a new fence around her property.
The woman went on TikTok a couple of months ago to ask people for advice about how to keep her peace with a neighbor. After she got the land surveyed, it turned out he was encroaching on her side of the land. However, he wasn't that keen on solving this issue amicably at first.
One man found out his property is not as big as he thought after a neighbor got it surveyed for a new fence
Image credits: wirestock / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The woman asked for advice about how to handle the dispute: "I also have to live next to this man"
I'm having a dispute with my neighbor, and I want to know what you guys would do. So you can see, this is my lawn here. This is my neighbor's lawn.
Image credits: my_socalled_life
I want to have a fence put in, the back of my house. I knew that this was not our boundary, our property line, but he kept cutting over and over and over closer into my yard. And so I asked to meet with him before I have the fence built so it would give me, like, an extra foot.
He was very condescending and very rude, he kept telling me to get a survey because I think he believed that he was gonna lose space. I knew that wasn't true.
I kept trying to work it out with him. I told him I didn't want to pay for the survey if I didn't have to. I was happy to give him some space because there's not a whole lot of space in his yard to begin with. I was trying to be kind, right?
Image credits: my_socalled_life
Nope. Now I wanna be petty, and I need somebody to either give me permission to be petty or tell me that that's bad karma. So I did call a surveyor. I had the surveyor come out today.
There's my lines. There's my boundary. That's his driveway. That's my boundary line. You can see it all the way. So I ended up with multiple feet more than I expected. Multiple. And he's very unhappy, which I don't blame him. He's very unhappy with how close that is.
There's my lines. There's my boundary. That's his driveway. That's my boundary line. You can see it all the way. So I ended up with multiple feet more than I expected. Multiple. And he's very unhappy, which I don't blame him. He's very unhappy with how close that is.
Image credits: my_socalled_life
I wasn't home when the surveyor did this. The surveyor sent me these pictures. I have him on my ring camera at, like, 2:06PM, putting my paperwork in my door. By 2:16PM, these stakes were out of the ground.
The neighbor came and pulled them out of the ground because he didn't like where they were. So he picked them up and threw them on the ground.
I did send my neighbor a message and told him that he cannot do that again. That's destruction of property. If he doesn't like where the boundary lines are, he's more than welcome to get his own survey that he pays for.
He's welcome to call my guy to come back out, that he's gonna pay for, but he cannot move these again. I put them back where I could see the stakes had been. Put 'em right back up. So anyway, he just kept saying that I was wrong. The surveyor was wrong. He's going to the city.
Image credits: my_socalled_life
I've been asking this man for two months to talk about this whole issue with me, and he kept just putting me off. He wouldn't do it. He was not amenable. He wanted me to pay for everything, to have it done, and I was fine doing that. He doesn't want to split the cost of the fence? No problem. He doesn't want to pay for the survey? No problem. I got it.
Image credits: my_socalled_life
So now I have two options. What I'm thinking is either have the fence coming to the property line, or I can cut in where the tree is and kind of do an angle, if that makes sense.
So if this was you, what would you do? Would you be petty or would you be kind about it? Because right now, I'm just so irritated. If this is the kind of temper tantrum he's throwing over just the stakes being put in the ground, what's he gonna do to an actual fence? So anyway, I know that's a lot, but what would you do? Give me your thoughts.
As more and more people got invested in the fence drama, the woman's video garnered more than 14M views
A week later, she posted a long-awaited update
The drama doesn't end here – the tree caused some headaches for everyone involved
The TikTok creator Juniper Pearl, aka @my_socalled_life, posted the first video in the saga on August 14th. Since then, there have been quite a few updates. Juniper did meet with the neighbor and it seems they were able to come to an amicable decision.
However, that didn't last for long. A week after that second update, the neighbor withdrew his decision to have the tree removed. That was another wrench into Juniper's fence efforts and didn't really make sense, since an arborist she hired declared that it was best to remove it since it was too diseased for relocation.
After that response from the neighbor, Juniper read up on the laws about "boundary trees". Interestingly, she found out that the tree wasn't on the boundary at all – it was 100% on her side of the property.
Juniper submitted a request to remove the tree to the HOA, but the board wanted official evidence from the surveyors and the arborist. She refused to submit any official statements, mostly because she didn't have them, but also because she felt they were selectively enforcing the rules with her.
After checking the HOA by-laws, Juniper found out that homeowners don't need permission to remove a tree if its diameter is less than six inches. Since the tree in question was only 2.95 inches in diameter, Juniper deduced that she didn't need the HOA's approval. Still, the board rejected her request and insisted on proof.
More conflicts with the neighbor followed, but the woman did eventually get her fence
That's when the thousands of people following the drama came through for the creator. As the HOA insisted on an arborist's official inspection, people pitched in and funded the $450 fee. Juniper thanked people for their financial help: "I had a very good cry over the kindness of all of you."
Finally, the HOA approved her fence and she decided to build the fence a few feet into her property so that the tree stays outside. Her correspondence with the neighbor also got increasingly passive-aggressive, as he started threatening to get his own surveyor and saying that the HOA wouldn't approve her fence.
On the 13th of October, the tree did come down. Juniper documented the whole thing, and the neighbor did come outside at one point to argue with the landscapers. "As soon as I noticed the neighbor was outside, I ran back out ready for the confrontation, but he skittered away immediately. I haven't heard a peep from him since," Juniper wrote.
Then, on October 24th, the story finally saw its culmination – the fence was finally there! The creator opted for a six-foot privacy fence and can finally enjoy her peace from the grumpy neighbor.
In her videos, Juniper also spoke about how crazy the whole experience was. She didn't expect her story to get 14 million views and for people to become so invested. Right after the video went viral, she disabled the comments, saying that it was just too much. But, eventually, she embraced her role as the "Neighbor drama lady on TikTok" and now even has accepted the "New fence owner" moniker in her bio.
And this is how her yard looks now, with a brand new fence
Image credits: my_socalled_life
Image credits: my_socalled_life
Image credits: my_socalled_life
"It's not petty to possess your property," commenters said, advising the woman to go full-speed
