Seems suspicious to me that he had a lawyer ready. Some places have a law that if you allow a neighbor to access or use part of your property for a structure you are essentially giving it to them and it is no longer your property. It seems odd that his property would actually be so close to your house.
I want to thank everyone for their info. It is really helping me try to decide what to do. Please keep them coming.
As far as “why does your neighbor hate you?” I can only imagine is the fact that I have been living here for 4 years before he moved in and I am very close to all my neighbor. When he moved in he immeadiatly turned his property into a trash dump. I’m not just talking about junk. It is also garbage, food, paper, plastic, and mega buckets of hazerdous fluids, from what we could see at a distance, painting supplies and pestisides. He brought dozens of chickens, rosters, rabbits, ducks and a few cats. He does not have any type of fence in the back or in the front of his home.Rooster are illegal and we all had to deal with them constantly crowing all day and all night. ALL these animals roamed freely thoughout the neighborhood. The only fence he has was the ones on both sides of him, between the homes. My property is completly fenced in all around with chain link and gates. There were a couple places that his farm animals were able to squeeze through at my gates poles. His ducks and chicken would fly over the fence into my yard and his rabbits would get under my redwood day and stay there for weeks. Driving my dog crazy. I asked him nicely several times when we met at our driveways to please keep his animals contained. ALL of the neighbors around expressed the same concern. Some times a neighbors dog would get loose {never mine} and end up on his property chasing after his farm animals. He would catch them and call the dog pound and the pound would take them. He was also caught several times by several neighbors tresspassing onto their property. When they confronted him he would say that he was surching for his farm animals. Even after dark! After at leaast 10 times of me asking him nicely. I once again nicely told him that if I see his animals in my yard again i’m calling the pound. The next day, i found at least a dozen of his chicken in my front yard. I called the pound and asked me if I can catch them. I said that can try. So, I went out there with an open crushed boz and placed it between them and my side fence traping about 8 of them. The pound came and the officer went over thier home and the only one home was a pre-teen girl. With her help we ALL caught the fowl by hand and put them into boxes and she took them home. The officer inspected their property and animals and gave her a written warning, The officer told me that they had too many chickens and rabbits and the roosters MUST go. I couple days later while I was watering my front lawn a bunch of his ducks were enjoying themselves under my spinklers. I ignored them. Then I had a knock on my door. It was a COP. he said the neighbor had complained that my water was getting onto his properrty and could I please turn it down your neighbor is complaining. I looked and the water pressure had risen and water was now spraying about 1-2 feet onto his driveway that runs right next to my lawn. I apoligised and turned the water pressure down. THEN, not long after that I got a certified letter from him that i had to sign for. In it he accused me of shinning my frashlight onto his daughter at night while she was in his backyard jumping on her trampaline, and he was taking that very seriously. He did not know the exact date and was going by what his daughter told him. I WAS IN SHOCK. THAT NEVER HAPPEND. A kid jumping on a trampaline in the dark makes NO sence. I replied letter explaining to him basicaly his letter is complete BS. And to leave me alone. He then bought the fencing material (minus the railroad ties) and stacked them on his driveway right next to my lawn. A day or 2 later he comes banging on my front door like a mad man. My wife and I dor and he starts yelling, cussing and treatening me. My only words to him was yourcrazyget off my property. About 10 mins later another knock on my door and it’s a cop AGAIN. Now he has accused me of trespassing onto his property. We told the cop what happend and that HE was the one that is guiltyof trespassing with intent to harrassme. My neighbors and I call him satan. He is evil, devious, deceptive and distructive. Heknows that I am close to my nieghbors. Well now you know why he hates me.
Geeze, that sounds really horrid! I feel for you and your neighbours, what a wretched circumstance to be in!
I’d be really worried why he suddenly wants privacy fencing, when he’s heretofore been so overt with his fully unacceptable antics. I shudder to think what he wants to get up to, that requires no one can see! Yikes!
(Maybe wait till he gets whatever he’s planning on setting up done, THEN call and get the structure inspected? They could catch him cold, up to something seriously illegal? Maybe.)
yes, one person used the term “SPITE FENCE” That is exactly what is.
I should add a few more facts. His pre-teen daughter is actually his step daughter. Her mom is about 30 years YOUNGER that her step dad is. Soon after the above things happend. She told my wife and I that she HATES her stepdad. Soon after she told us that she disapeared. We have no idea where she went. She has been gone for several weeks. We are hoping that she went to spend the summer with her real dad.
With neighbors like that, and a history of threats…You need a professional land surveyor to mark the boundary of your property, officially . And you need an official statement from your municipal engineering dept (or whatever department ) stating the regulations about building fences.
And you probably need a lawyer who knows the local definitions of “maintaining a nuisance” (or whatever the legal terminology is), for the guy’s unfenced lot from which animals harrass the neighborhood.
And you probably should install a video surveillance system to protect your own property.
Yikes. I was going to suggest growing bamboo to get back at him, (not that it would work in Idaho) but he sounds like he deserves tactical nuclear weapons.
I’d say that you and the other neighbors he has annoyed should go together to a lawyer, and tell him or her the story. I wouldn’t put trying to sue you past him - he has already called the cops. I bet there are all sorts of things that can be done to keep him in check. Plus, I’d suspect attorneys are clubby in small towns, which will help any cop or judge laugh his accusations out of court.
Any of those ducks big enough to eat? Maybe fowl on your property is available. If legal, it would be pretty funny.
Dear Nampa Mike:
It sounds like you have a lot of hot drama going on in your neighborhood. I look forward to reading about your next adventure.
I’m confused: You already had a chain link fence between your properties. Neighbor then built an 8’ tall wooden fence between your chain link fence and your house?
OP it seems that you seem to be approaching this fence thing as if it’s some sort of moral wrong against you or that there is some sort of blanket national cultural more’ as to what your neighbor can or can’t do relative to how close his fence can be to your house.
No, this is a local legal issue in the community in which you live. The land on which your house sits has property lines. They adjoin to the property lines of your neighbor. If you don’t know where your property line is, YOU SHOULD FIND OUT. Some communities have rules regarding how far from the property line, if any, you may build a fence or a structure. YOU SHOULD KNOW THESE RULES FOR YOUR CITY. This is the only way you are going to determine if your neighbor is breaking the law and encroaching on your property. It’s a simple legal matter. If your neighbor is encroaching on your property and you do nothing its possible in certain jurisdictions that you may in essence be giving your neighbor portions of your property under adverse possession.
Wonderful advice. If the OP returns without having calleg his municipality, then I suggest he is not primarily interested in learning about/resolving the specific fence issue.
As Omar says, we can debate all day as to how neighbors OUGHT to act. The applicable laws dictate how they HAVE to act. Call code enforcement, they will address any issue, or inform you if you have no valid complaint. That is what yoiu are paying them to do.
Also, you ought to have a property survey. Should have received one when you bought. There generally are pipes or markings on the pavement at the corners. For any intelligent discussion of what property owners can or cannot do, you need to know the properties’ broders. Code enforcement will instruct the neighbor to move anything - fence or ties - that are on your property.
Finally - sucks to have lousy neighbors move in. Best of luck in dealing with them.
I heard somewhere that good fences make good neighbors.
Perhaps he needs privacy for cooking meth.
A surveyor was one of my patrons at the Library. He said that any time a property was surveyed, it was screwed up. 
Surveys aren’t cheap. Around here (NorCal) it would be about $1,200 to get a basic property line and house location surveyed. But that might be money well spent if it keeps an asshole at bay.
Everything Omar said above is correct, it is incumbent upon you to take action. Otherwise, I have nothing to add to the good advice already given here but I thought I’d add a personal anecdote:
Several years ago, a new family moved in beside my parents’ house. Nice people with 3 kids under 6 yrs who quickly made friends with my parents but not, unsurprisingly, with their neighbours whose backyard faced theirs. They were in the habit of having numerous loud visitors complete with shouted obscene language, blasted music at all hours and treated their backyard like a junk heap.
When he politely asked them to tone it down for the sake of his children, their behaviour turned to harassment. The obscenities turned vaguely threatening, the junk they tended to toss into their own yard occasionally “accidentally” ended up in his pool. One time, they turned their big screen TV out their back window towards his house and played hardcore porn on a loop.
That was probably the last straw so my parents’ neighbour built an 8’ high (max. allowed by city bylaws) wood privacy fence between their properties to replace the existing 4’ chainlink fence. This provoked a few jeers from the bad neighbours who childishly defaced the fence on their side but otherwise things seemed to settle down. For awhile. Until my parent’s neighbour got a notice that his fence was encroaching on his neighbour’s property by 6 inches.
As it turns out, the bad neighbour wasn’t as stupid as his behaviour suggested. He had paid to have a property boundary survey done so he was legally within his rights to demand that the fence be moved. He took great joy in watching my parent’s neighbour take everything down (even inviting friends to come to point and laugh) just to have to put it up again 6 inches away. Thankfully, that turned out to be the end of the feud and the bad neighbours settled down and eventually moved much to the relief of everybody else in the neighbourhood.
My parents’ neighbour learned a hard lesson that cost him several thousand extra dollars and additional labour. Respect property lines and get a survey done if you can’t find any surveyor’s stakes. I know surveys are expensive (I got a quote of $900 to have one down on my own property when I bought my current house) but the expense would be worth it in your case because there’s no way the fence that you described could possibly conform to any code or bylaw.
The chain link fence between our property, runs from the corner of my home seperating my backyard from his. He has built his wooden fence along it in the back yard, continueing HIS fence along my wall where there was no fence. My backyard fence is just a backyard fence. HIS fence runs all the way through the yard and continues along MY home. My fence ends at the corner of my home in my backyard.
It’s doubtful that that is your property line.
As many others have told you, you need to take action, and you need to do it now. The longer you let this fence exist without fighting it, the more difficult it will be to do something about it.
Yeah, you really need to stop clarifying things to us, here on the web. Really no more actionable advice we can give you. You need to contact local zoning and code enforcement, they are paid (by you, in the form of taxes) to do exactly this kind of thing.
If there has been a house on the property for many years there may well be an existing survey. On file somewhere.
We bought a 135yr old house, and were considering paying for a survey, but our friend the surveyor said not to. He just looked it up and sent me photocopies of the on file surveys of the three properties bordering mine. So, while I don’t actually have a survey for my property, I have copies of my three neighbours which clearly delineate all property lines.
Slick, right? Saved us close to a thousand dollars!
Have you pictures?
I think the only picture relevant at this point would be one of the OP talking to someone in the Planning Dept of his city/town.