Legal Situation

Fence construction dispute: What your neighbor is (not) allowed to do

Living side by side with neighbors isn’t always easy: people are, after all, very different. What one person likes, another can’t stand; what makes one person happy drives the other to fury...(Bild: RealPeopleStudio - stock.adobe.com)

Spring is here and luring us back out into the woods and gardens. The latter are usually marked off by fences: a boundary structure, as a fence is called in legal terms, thus defines what is “yours” and what is “mine.” And: it’s naturally a frequent source of conflict among neighbors. Who’s allowed to do what? We’ll tell you!

One of the “favorite topics” of dispute among neighbors is enclosures—that is, fences, hedges, stone walls, and the like. Viennese lawyer Martin Bleckmann is an expert on the subject of enclosures and knows the ins and outs all too well from daily practice. As such, he is also aware of the most common misconceptions surrounding fences and fence construction.