Living peacefully on Maple Street, I had a verbal agreement with my neighbors, Jim and Susan, to build a fence for privacy. We shook hands on it, and I went ahead and built the fence close to the property line.
Jim and Susan were appreciative—they got the benefit of the fence without having to pay a dime for it.
A year ago, they sold their house, and Kayla, a city realtor, moved in. Not long after, she had a land surveyor mark the boundaries and informed me that my fence encroached nine inches onto her property.
“Move the fence or pay for the land,” she demanded. Without any written proof of my agreement with Jim and Susan, I had no choice but to dismantle the fence.