Neighbors logging our land!

I generally try to resolve civil disputes on my own. I've been known to resort to police & courts on occasion, but I've found that I can usually work something out privately.

You may or may not be aware that I'm currently involved in a civil dispute with a hospital right now, on behalf of an elderly friend. From a consultation with a lawyer I have a pretty good idea of what I'm after, so since I would rather not see a lawyer get half the settlement I'm negotiating myself. If I'm not getting what I expect then we may eventually need a lawyer, but so far it looks promising.

It's just good practice to look for resolutions to your civil disputes on your own.

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There you go! People are generally reasonable.

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It's definitely something that law enforcement should be involved in.. they have some explaining to do, and there are severe penalties for crossing the property line, even if it was accidental. I'd post it for sure, letting them know you're aware of their activities. Doesn't have to involve confrontation, but just using the channels that are available to you for your protection.

Adverse possession is not very easy to prove in Michigan.. the burden of proof is on the 'user' versus the owner.. but it can be a headache and expense to get it cleared up in court if they decide to pursue it.

Whoa! I certainly didnt expect this many replies!

Well....

Here is the layout: Our property is to the right of theirs, from the road. In between there is a ditch/creek that doesnt follow the line. Each property goes back from the yard, to a field (both of us rent our fields out to the other neighbors), to the woods. Behind the woods is another field. Thats how it is here, scattered patches of woods in fields.

They are taking down trees in "stands", as in 10-15 trees here, move down a ways, 10-15 more trees... etc... And the last 2 or 3 "stands" were on our property. So its not as though its a ridiculously large amount of wood.... And I doubt it was expensive lumber. I believe that the trees were mostly ash, beech, oak... that type of wood. Hard to tell without leaves. The very largest couldnt have been more than a foot or two wide. There are larger trees deeper in, but they are taking wood from the edge.

I'm not sure what they are doing with the wood; we're assuming that they will let it dry over the summer and then sell it and burn it themselves next winter. A common practice in this neighborhood. Especially since they are probably out of wood from the trees they cut several years ago along the ditch... that was a whole fiasco with the county digging the ditch deeper in case of "flooding", though it hasn't gone over its banks since who knows when. But thats another rant....

They do know where the property line is, and so do we. But the post that marked it was pulled out some years ago.... hmmm, wonder who that was?

Anyway, our plan was to ask them if they were the ones who are logging (which they are, but its a way not to directly place the blame... ex: "youre logging our woods!"). Then, ask them to move their logging activites away from the line, switch the direction back onto their property. Hopefully that works. If not, then we might have to try something more serious.

We dont really mind them hunting or 4 wheeling, its not as though we hunt anything ourselves. (Why eat deer when you can eat sheep? Thats why we raise them, after all. ) But we do wish they wouldnt litter. We pick up the cans every spring, though, and deposit them for money at the store. Maybe when we ask them about the trees we can do the same with the cans.

The deer and dog were not on our property, thankfully. We just found them on our walk today. (They walk on our propety, we walk on theirs!) I just mentioned them because it was an interesting and very wierd find. Oddly enough, they didnt have a sheltie. They have a lab mix and a big black wooly monster. And we didnt know that anyone else had a sheltie around here, either. We couldnt tell what it had died from, except that it wasnt shot, or whether it was dumped or died there on its own. Either way, it was very fresh and a wierd thing to find. Our nice stroll turned into a sort of small slaughterhouse tour for a while!

Hope this clears things up!

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Abby
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Unless life also hands you sugar and water, your lemonade is going to suck.

I think that's a wise approach. You don't want to use a sledge hammer when a tack hammer will do. These are your neighbors, and a peaceful existence depends on the cooperation of everyone. Hear him out before deciding to do anything.

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You could put us a few game cameras and try to find out for sure who is doing the logging...You could still try to work things out privately if it were the neighbors..but have evidence against them if it did go to court..But I would surely post the property and assert your property rights.

If the neighbor disputes you claim over the property bounday, I guess the first thing I'd do is get a certified survey of the line. Then, there will be no dispute that he logged on your property.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

It was at the Indiana State Fair, waaaay back when...... Dad bought me a thing called a 'Slinky' from a vendor there. First time anybody had ever seen a Slinky(how many times I got that thing kinked, I don't know....) But I was the hit of the fairgrounds, as I played with that thing and made it go back and forth between my hands. Even stole the show from the man in the booth selling vegetable peelers, who could use his spiral blade to make potato curls, but my Slinky was so much a distraction to his crowd that they just laughed at him....... So, I was going through the Manufacturer's Building when a kid--one of those city newspaper boy types, with his cocked hat, his freckles, and his hard eyes, came up to me and started watching my Slinky. "Gee," he said, "Can I try that?" And he reached out for my Slinky. Oh, why not? I thought,(he did look a bit tougher and wiser than me, just a kid off the farm....and he was an Indianapolis boy..... As he played with my Slinky, he started drifting backward, a little at a time, until he was about fifty feet away from me. My Dad said, "You better go get your Slinky back" And I summoned up my courage, reaching him, and my Slinky, just shortly before he would have disappeared down another aisle.

The moral? It's up to you to be proactive, if now downright aggressive, to protect what belongs to you. From day one......

So, in the last twenty-five years, how often have you talked to your neighbor? Do you know his name? When you bought the property, did you have it surveyed and staked(with irons)? Did you put any barriers or fences or gates? How often have you patrolled your boundary lines? Have you ever mentioned, or discussed, things going on that you didn't think were right? Beer cans? Deer stands? Four wheelers? Carcasses? Logging?

I apologize for sounding so blunt, but this forum has gone through this discussion, or one close to it, nearly every month. I think you want us to go fetch your Slinky back.

An oak tree or other hardwood for that matter that is 1 or 2 ft wide is large enough to be used for lumber making. If the encroachers are logging it themselves they probably intend on having it sawed and using the lumber for their camphouse or more deer blinds. If a professional logging crew is cutting it, there is probably some money involved that is moving directly away from you as far as assets are concerned.

There's approximately 60 board ft. in a 12" diameter tree that has one 16 ft. log in it. In a 24" inch diameter tree (diameter measured 41/2 ft. from ground level) there is about 220 board ft. So you see, it doesn't take many trees before you have a very tangible loss. 15 trees at those diameters would be somewhere between 900 and 3,300 board ft. Doesn't seem like much, but sawed and air dried it adds up in value. If those trees had more than one 16ft. log, then the total loss jumps quite a bit. Just depends on how many trees they got out and how many 16 ft. log lengths were in each tree.

Around here, an inadvertant encroachment carries a customary penalty (for just a few trees) for 200% of market value of the sawn lumber. For trees deliberately cut and removed there is usually a criminal charge if you wanted it and a settlement by a larger amount than 200% of market value depending on what you think your damages have been

A well marked property line, written permits to hunt or fish, and sometimes a call to your forestry commission and game wardens usually add teeth to your rights as a landowner.

Not sure where foxfiredidit lives, but I know here in Pennsylvania if a logger goes over a property line and cuts trees, there are penalties plus I believe the landowner gets up to 3 times what the tree was worth.

As for trees on the property line, I would think they would be owned by both property owners and therefore would require the permission of BOTH owners to cut them with the resulting money split. It doesn't matter if xoxoGOATSxoxo had any plans on using the trees, half of them belong to them!

Probably the first thing to do is to approach the neighbors and tell them they have logged some of the trees on the property line which is half of your tree. Ask them what they intend to do about it.

If you don't get anything other than an apology, I would be calling in the state police to report a lumber theft. I would also be telling the neighbors that your property is now CLOSED to any activity - 4 wheeling, hunting, etc.

While I don't mind people using my property for hunting (if they ask), there is no way I would continue to let them use my property as a trash can!

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Michael W. Smith in North-West Pennsylvania

"Everything happens for a reason."

I realize you believe yourself to be the expert here, but perhaps a look at recent cases will shed a little light on the issue.

This case got national attention for a while, and all the neighbors did was use a path through their neighbors yard. They were initially awarded 34% of the neighbors property.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008...-case-settled/

The OP's neighbors have apparently had exclusive use of the OP's land for 25 years, hunting, clearing, using trails and now logging, with nary a word of objection from the OPs.

The requirements for adverse possession are:

Actual possession of the property
Open and notorious use of the property
Exclusive use of the property
Hostile or adverse use of the property
Continuous use of the property

It certainly seems from what the OP has said that the neighbors have fulfilled ALL of the requirements.

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I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Popeye

If it were me, and I know I can speak for my husband too.. we wouldn't share the use or make it available to others.. I know it might be hard to do, because you want to be a nice person and good neighbor, but from the sounds of it these people are not good neighbors in return. There is no guarantee they would not use the law against you in an adverse possession case, or liability, or any number of things that can come at you from left field. They are ever so slowly expanding and abusing your good nature, in my opinion... We have seen this happen and have been involved in a court case for adverse possession - which the person making the claim lost. It involved traveling on and leaving junk cars on land he did not own. In his case he wanted to expand his one acre into 20 acres. You just never know what people will try to pull over on ya.

Good fences make good neighbors

My parents dealt with adverse possession. From the sounds of it your neighbors have a very good case if they decide to get nasty. In my parent's case a guy bought some land behind theirs and had it surveyed. Turned out the line was off about 5 feet or so to my parent's advantage. He got sort of stinky when it came down to who was going to pay for what part of the fence. Had the same dispute with the neighbor. Long story short, the new guy lost his case to his neighbor since the land was farmed since 1969 by the neighbor he took to court. While going to court I found out all sorts of things about adverse possession, it can be as simple has putting out some junk on some one else's land. After seeing that court case I am a strong believer in good fences make good neighbors.

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i would be on the telephone with the police and dnr..and also ask for the wood back..you can sell it for firewood or for veneers if you don't need it yourself..a good veneer tree can sell for thousands..

that is just plain theivery and breaking the law...we had a pulper steal huge maples from us when we were first married..

Are the neighbors actually wielding chainsaws? or are they having their land logged. Loggers, unsupervised, will take trees on the fenceline. My personal experience is to talk directly with the loggers, and make them understand (in your firmest voice possible) that taking any tree anywhere close to the fence that actually weakens the fence will be grounds for trouble. Trouble can be very nice trouble, like filing a paper lawsuit... or bad trouble, like accidentally mistaking an extremely expensive piece of logging equipment for a coyote. Hey, it worked wonders for me... last logger gave a 80' buffer. Of course, when I approached thru the woods, I sorta resembled bigfoot toting a 'hawgleg'.

Hereabouts, amenable neighbors log every other tree on a joining fenceline... if the fenceline is also the boundary. Trees not to be logged for any reason are marked.

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Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Of course, let's take this particular case with a grain of salt... these folks were living in the progressive socialist paradise of Boulder.

I have a 'wandering' fence/boundary. If anyone ever tried to claim adverse possession, all I'd have to do is pull the fence up, and then we'd be back to the original survey line.

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Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

As you pointed out, the claimant has to establish the exclusive use and possession of the property. I appreciate your confirming that fact for me.

But I don't see how the claimant can make that claim when the current owner is living on the property. It certainly isn't exclusive possession when someone else lives there, and since the owner is using the property as a residence it can't be exclusive use either.

Honestly people, some posters around here are going to make us all nervous wrecks. Chill out, he's got no claim of adverse possession. He just cut a stand of trees a little too close to the property line for comfort.

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You are right. He cut trees a little too close to the property line for comfort. Thing is, which side of the property were the trees cut. If it's not his timber then he has no right and he needs to remedy the encroachment with his money paid to the landowner. The amount paid should be higher than market value.

You can determine market value by looking at the stumps and comparing the stump diameters with stump diameters of trees still standing in the close general area. Tally the stump diameters of the trees cut. Tally stump diameters of trees in the general area along with the number of 16 ft. log lengths or pulpwood value in cords from standard volume tables you can look up on the internet. Your forestry commission will gladly help you out here. That's their job.

Charge him for your loss. Get your money. Protect your property. Move his hunting away from your land. Don't give your rights as a landowner away to someone who cares nothing for you or your property.

Read the case I posted. That should clear up your confusion. There is no need to live there.

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I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Popeye

Adverse possession laws apply in cases where, for example, a neighbor builds a garage on his property.. years later, it is found that the property line runs underneath the garage and in fact is built on your land. You may lose that portion of your property due to adverse possession if more that 15 years has passed (in Michigan) and the other requirements that Common Tator listed are in play... You living on your property has nothing to do with it.