I do like the fertilizer program you have, Larisa. Just might give it a really big effort next year.
Yup! I am not a good neighbor. I continue to instigate trouble with the neighbors in hopes they will finally get their derrieres in gear and have the survey done. I consider myself to be a law-abiding citizen and I'm not doing anything illegal. I realize that the neighbors have a different interpretation of the judge's orders, but I am very literal and I am taking the judge literally. That section of the shed is mine now and has always been mine since 1976 when the deed was established.
Another court may make a decision on the ownership of the shed some day, but that decision would be "ex post facto" to the court orders of last year and nothing I've done so far is subject to legal action by the sheriff's department.
A bit of history:
It has been a full year since the Court orders asserting the land is and has always been mine. It has been a full year since I posted the notice:
1. They were to remove stored items from my property or have it considered abandoned.
2. They were to cease trespassing on my section of the property. With the formal trespassing notice, if they get hurt inside the shed they can't claim they got hurt on my property since they can't legally go onto my property.
3. I would be removing the siding from my side of the shed.
For that notice they called the sheriff and said they saw me trespassing on their property when I delivered the notice. For that they wanted me arrested.
Nope! I had paid a non-interested party to deliver -- eventually post since they were gone -- the notice. Did the deputy care they had lied to him? Nope. That seemed to be just fine. Of course, there was nothing the deputy could do. I was well within my rights to have the notice posted.
The time for their action having passed, we started removing the siding. (Nothing structural, but hey, the shed has holes in the roof, broken studs, top plate hanging down 1.5 inches below the studs, broken rafters and support boards, and missing facia boards.) The building really needs to be torn down. In fact, that is my solution to the problem, but I can't tear half a shed down. I also have a letter from the neighbors asserting that the shed would be removed BEFORE January 1, 2016 at their expense. I guess that's why I waited a year, now that I think of it.
Again they called the sheriff. Again the deputy said there was nothing he could do. The deputy did ask that we hold off on removing any more boards for a week until something was figured out.
Then the neighbors called someone on the town board and (lying, since the deputy had already said I wasn't doing anything structural) said I was demolishing the shed without a permit. An inspector stopped by and posted a citation to cease and desist the "demolition" including a "Do not remove" and a "stop work" order. That was a year ago.
Flip to the present:
A week ago I called the County building permit department asking if I needed a permit to work with the siding on a shed. I have their answer saved on my phone. No permit is needed for the county, but perhaps the township has permit requirements. I stopped at the township clerk's home and was told no permit was required for siding or windows.
Last Saturday, son and three friends removed the rest of our siding. They also removed all the abandoned items on my side of the shed. Just as we finished, up drove the deputy. As we had expected, the neighbor heard the sound of boards being removed and called the sheriff, telling him there was a stop work order on the building.
Wasn't I still under stop orders? Nope! Since I wasn't demolishing anything I needed no permit. In addition, non of us had ever seen a notice posted on the shed nor removed such. We had seen a notice flying in the wind and on the lawn near our wood shop, however. We assumed it was the one he was discussing, but, hey, how could I know for sure.
During this time the deputy kept staring at the piles of junk in the yard near the shed, but said nothing. Neither would he listen to my side since he had already decided there was no action he could take.
A couple of hours after the first deputy left, another deputy drove up. He was rude, curt, and tried to intimidate me. It seems the neighbors had driven past and seen 'their' property in my yard so they called the sheriff once again to report the theft. Since it had been removed before the first deputy asked us to stop working on the shed -- he thought we had taken it out after being asked to stop -- there was nothing he could do to me. He then told me that the Register of Deeds and another county commissioner (I didn't hear who) would be deciding who owned the shed on Wednesday.
Having two deputies hearing only the neighbor's side of the issue seemed biased, so I contacted the Register of Deeds asking for a hearing before any decision would be made. As I had expected, the man told me there was no way county officials could make that legal decision. It was a matter for the court and the court had settled the matter a year ago (he looked it up before we talked).
So, I have two very angry neighbors. I have a collection of things in the yard that will need to be removed soon for mowing. I want to wait first to see if they will take me to court for the property. Even though no one officially asked me not to move anything further, I had decided to let everything stay where the boys had put it.
Naughty neighbor that I am, while I didn't take anything from the abandoned items (I don't give a hoot toward keeping any of the junk we removed), I did add several things of my own to the piles. I figured the sheriff would need to be there when they retrieved what they thought was their property and I could easily prove they couldn't identify what was theirs and what wasn't. Unless the deputies wanted to aid and abet the theft of my property they couldn't allow anything to be removed.
So. . . . . .
That's where the boundary wars stand now. Yes, I am an instigator adding to the problems, but if I do nothing where will I stand on reclaiming my land? If this doesn't get them to take action and get the survey done I have one more plan to get under their skin, but I'm hoping the end of this whole affair comes soon.
And, yes, I do have a wildlife cam directed at the piles in the yard for when we're not outside. Tsk, tsk.
