A homeowner ended up taking some pretty petty revenge in a dispute with their neighbour over a garden fence.
Neighbourly disputes can be a real problem and sometimes, they can even escalate to ridiculous levels of pettiness as people try to outdo each other.
However, one person has found a way to take petty revenge on their neighbour over an ongoing feud that the two houses have.
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It all started with the erection of a fence which was erected on the boundary of two gardens. However, it seems that one neighbour had not paid for their share of the structure.
This raised a lot of questions of whose responsibility it actually is to pay for a fence when you put up a new one.
It borders both properties, but it might not always be so simple as simply splitting the cost, even though that seems like the most sensible option if a fence needs replacing.
However, one neighbour did not take kindly to a request that they split the cost of the fence between the two gardens. Spoiler alert: They did, of course, refuse to split the cost.
This led to their neighbour taking some rather drastic action, which they posted on TikTok with the caption: "When your neighbour refuses to pay their share of the fence."
In a post on social media, the TikToker wrote: "Hi hers is the near side with the small fence mine is the 6ft fence on my land so I decorated for her as she wouldn’t pay for the second time."
So what exactly did they do? Well, when their neighbour didn't pay, they simply painted one side of with big bright colours. They also daubed it with 'PRIVATE PROPERTY' and 'KEEP OUT'. Subtle.
However, it's not entirely clear exactly what has happened as this is only one side of events.
Boundary disputes can be extremely heated, sometimes even a dispute over just a few inches here or there could snowball into an expensive court case.
Surprisingly, in the UK there isn't a general rule that you have to erect a border around your property. There are exceptions, such as when property borders a railway line or when there's livestock on the land.
However, in terms of putting up a wall around say your garden, you don't have to.
That effectively means that if your neighbour put up a fence in their garden to separate theirs from yours, they're the ones that are responsible for it as it was their decision to erect the fence. You also can't make someone repair a fence, as there's no legal obligation to have it there in the first place.
You could make an informal agreement to split the costs of a fence, but there's no obligation for anyone to do so.
So it seems our disgruntled fence owner may have hit something of a hurdle.
Kit Roberts