Silver maples are easy to tell from other types by leaf shape. They have longer 'middle part of leaf and is usually much narrower where the ‘lobes’ are separated. Thiscan help you see the difference between a silver and others. Silvers also do not have much ‘color’ in fall, more of just yellowing then leaf-fall. Most other maples do the good ‘red tones’ as weather cools, fwiw. If that tree goes red, it is most likely not a silver. If you wanted to take a pic or two of a few leaves and bark/tree-shape, I could ID it for you easily, I bet. It would be advantageous to know what kind of maple ya got there, for sure.
Some people are totally nuts, and I mean nuts, about trees and leaves. We live in a townhouse, and have a large tree in our yard. My neighbor hates the thing and asked us once to have it cut down. She also said that the previous owners told her they would take it down. One day she had some people, and not tree people, to come and cut any branches that were over her yard, it was between a third and half the tree.
When it comes to the leaves, she is always outside cleaning them up, and I mean she’ll be out there at 11pm with a leaf blower getting rid of them.
Other then that she’s a nice woman, but when it comes to the leaves she’s a real nut case. I love having the tree here and don’t want it cut down.
You could always cut it down, then replant a new one. By the time it got big enough to be a nuisance, you’d be gone. Meanwhile, you have a nice new tree and you can watch it grow.
I have some trees that are too close to the house and getting too big, and I will probably replace them sometime.
snip.
Oh yeah. We’ve got one of these down the block from us. It’s an older couple, i think from the Dominican. They are outside Every Freakin Day manicuring the lawn and associated landscaping. On any number of occasions the man has tried to tell me that I’m not allowed to walk my dogs on the sidewalk that crosses his yard. He doesn’t care that it’s public property, or that my dogs have never used his yard at all. As far as he’s concerned, a dog will ruin his yard by simply looking at it. Yesterday he was biking by slowly while I had the dogs out across the road from MY home in the cowfield. I waved to him and said hello. He replied tersely “Must pick up after your dogs!” I lost my temper and told him to go fuck himself. He peddled off with a quickness i’d never seen in him before.
You could plant some trees in your yard now, so they’ll be larger by the time the others have to go.
Regarding the OP, I don’t think you have a lot of obligation to your neighbours over your tree. Like others have said, you can offer to go pick up twigs after a storm or something, but the tree was there when they moved in. We have some large Acer negundo in our back yard (aka Manitoba Maples), in both our yard and the neighbour’s yard, and hers will drop in our yard, and ours in hers, and that’s just the way it goes. We’re actually having our arbourist brother-in-law coming over this afternoon; I’m going to ask him about trimming hers back a little because it shades my veggie garden, but other than that, we’ll mostly leave the trees alone.
My neighbor has a huge maple like yours in her backyard. I curse the helicopters every year but then every year I realize they only last for like 2 weeks and it’s all back to normal. I do have to pull little maple saplings out of my flower beds, and clean my gutters, but that’s it.
You COULD call a company that cleans gutters and ask if they’d cut you a deal on cleaning out all of your neighbors’ gutters (just the ones on either side of you). Or check in to getting a group deal on everyone getting gutter guards.
For how much I hate my neighbor’s maple 2 weeks out of the year, I love it every other day - it’s the only source of shade for my yard. If it went away, I would totally miss it.
I hate all maples when those seeds are dropping too. Cutting down the tree would be ridiculous.
I vote for keeping the tree, too. Also for maybe paying for a lawn raking at the end of leaf-dropping season.
The subject doesn’t come up in our neighborhood: when the contractor put in this subdivision they planted Norway maples EVERYWHERE. Down both sides of the street, scattered around side and back yards. It makes for a lot of shade, two weeks of absolutely gorgeous color in the fall, and several billion leaves each year. 
So, yeah, I may be raking leaves that fell from a neighbor’s trees, but some of the leaves from my trees ended up elsewhere. It all evens out in the end.
OTOH, our neighbors on one side have a row of BIG pines along the lot line. They drop an awful lot of pine cones on our yard. Not cutes suitable for artsy project, long knobby ugly ones. We’ve taken to raking the cones that fall on our lawn (and whatever pine needles come along) back over to under their trees. We’ve never spoken to the neighbors about this, but they have many times seen us doing it and they haven’t broached the subject either.
Hey, they have a lawn service doing their yard every week – let them deal with hauling away the ugly pine cones.
The covered gutters have been up for two seasons. I haven’t seen the neighbor remove the covers but I’ve seen him use a leaf blower to blow the helicopters off his roof and the tops of the gutters. This is a really persnickety neighbor, and I think if the helicopters had gotten inside the gutters, he’d be taking the covers off and cleaning them. I haven’t seen him do that, so I think the covers are working.
I wouldn’t say anything to you either, but I’d probably be quietly mumbling. If you’re already going to the trouble of raking up the cones, why not just rake them into a pile and burn them?
Another vote to not cut the tree down. I don’t really see any obligation to help clean up the leaves, etc., but that might be a nice thing to do.
As requested, here are some tree pics.
I’m new to Flickr so lets see if this link works.
Many thanks to all for the kind replies and support.
That is indeed a silver maple.
Wow - that tree is all out of proportion with your house and yard, and in the wrong spot, too. That said, I’d hate to see such a magnificent specimen taken down over something that is completely to be expected with a deciduous tree.
Considering that the tree almost certainly was there before the house, or even the town which was settled in the 1880s, I’d say the house is in the wrong spot, not the tree.
Crap falling into your neighbors yard is their own problem, no need to go out of your way to stop it or help them.
I’d probably loose that tree if it were my house. If your neighbors have the same interest in getting rid of it, you could see if they are interested in sharing some of the expense. They have no obligation to do so, but may just to be rid of it.
It is a wonderful tree. It’s just in a bad place. If it was well away from your house it would be great. Next to your house however it’s an accident waiting to happen.
I’m willing to bet that he’d rather chop down the tree then chop down his house. Not really fair but the tree loses. If it wanted to survive it should have learned to use an ax.
If the tree really is 200 or more years old I’d feel obligated to try and preserve it. You might even be able to add it to some historic tree society or something.
Could use a good trimming though. A good arborist should be able to clean it up, maybe over the course of a couple years, and keep it healthy without salivating over the prospect of chopping it down.
As a formally trained tree care specialist, I would guess that tree is no more than 130yrs, probably somewhere between that and 110yrs or so. Those trees are notoriously fast growers.
Not saying it’s not worth saving but the proportions are nothing unusual for this particular species and this specimen probably isn’t worthy of any historic tree society’s attention. Silver maples are often considered weed trees, so much nicer specimens should be easy to find. These trees are infamous for breaking, they form “v” crotches when branching. V and U crotches, structural features related to tree strength (the example here includes red maple - a stronger more structurally sound tree than silver maple)
I would make sure your home owners insurance will cover the event that any of those large limbs should break, swooping down to remodel your house.
For the gutters, you could always get one of theseand let the neighbors borrow it.