[Anke]

If this has come up after three years only and just before you are having a baby I think there is something else that this lady has got a problem with - maybe she is not too happy about a baby down/up stairs and worried about noise and a bit more mess about in the garden etc etc. She may not even be conscious of it herself, its just one of these:".... and another annoying thing about my neighbour...". (Or if she is really a bit nasty, then she will think that exactly now you do not have the time/energy/money to argue....)

But if the trees are blocking the light to her garden it would be a nice guesture to at least reduce their height/density (and have it done by a qualified tree surgeon at her cost), and maybe hope that that is the end of the story.... I know how difficult it is to have unreasonable neighbours, just in a similar situation to you....

Anyway hope the baby arrives ok, and you will be soooo busy you will not have time to cut down trees and argue with neighbours!

[Blueeyes]

Hiya, firstly congratulations on your wedding and baby, such exciting news 

Just wanted to let you know wat happened with us, we had neighbours that we ended up having a small dispute with over some land, they wasn't happy we had managed to track down the owners in Spain and buy it, even though they hadn't done anything about it themselves. When they found out we had bought it the 'lady' from next door (said in the loosest terms possible) decided everything in her life that went wrong was my fault, she threatened me with assault, tried to run me off the road several times (once whilst I had my disabled daughter in the car), almost ran up the back of my husband when he was driving my car, etc etc

Anyways to cut a long story short it got to the point where I wouldn't be in the house on my own, I hated going outside of the property in case she was there, it was horrendous! My hubby works bloody hard and yet had all this to come home to every night and so within a couple of weeks we had bought our house in the country and moved without anyone knowing anything about it, we now have a huge immaculate house that we have had to rent out whilst we are busy doing up our place 

It's worked out for the best really as we now have land and lots of animals and a fantastic way of life for our daughter to grow up enjoying and best of all NO Neighbours    but even though I consider myself to be a strong person I've got to say it was hell on earth living like that, and as someone else said your wife and new baby will bear the brunt of most of it.

Some people seem enjoy making other peoples lives hell, our old neighbour is now doing the same things to 2 other families living there.

I really hope you get it sorted, and enjoy all lifes going to bring to you!

Blueeyes xx

[Rosemary]

I agree that a conciliatory approach will reap rewards in the long run. Life's too short to go round falling out with folk.

Oh, and many congratulations on the marriage and the baby 

[bigchicken]

I had an altercation with one of my neighbours where I keep my sheep I got angry and told him if he bothered me again I would thump him,not the right thing to do but it worked and he has never spoken to me since. I,m a bad man.

[little blue]

Congtratulations on the wedding & baby!
hope you sort this tree stuff out with as littel grief as possible - life's too short and precious to waste falling out with neighbors!

[sellickbhoy]

hi everyone

thanks for all your comments

1st of all, i totally agree, life is too short to have a feud running......however, in this case, nothing i say or do will end it. If it wasn't the trees, it would be something else - the hours i work, the colour of my car, friends/family visiting,

Also, from speaking to ALL of my neighbours and the previous owners of my hosue, it is clear - she is a feckin looney!! everyone of them have had a run in with her of some sort. One person I spoke to even told me that she had tried to poison his parents horses when they were stabled in the old stables in my garden (a pretty serious charge - of which i have no evidence to back it up other than his telling me)

So, i KNOW that no matter what I do, she will complain about something.......it is in her DNA.

It is for that reason, and that one alone, that I would perfer to leave the trees just to annoy her. OK, that makes me small and petty, but if I don't have to cut them then i'm going to leave them, because if I do volunteer to cut them.....it will only encourage her.

As to the trees blocking her light......given that her house is immediately above mine - she gets teh same (maybe even more) light than I do.

I know that under scots law you are entitled to light, but you are NOT entitled to a view (which was her complaint)

as for blocking light on her garden - IT'S A BOG. she grows nothing there - except letting grass grow long so she can graze the horses occasionally.

Funnily enough, the previous owner told me that one of the complaints my neighbour had was when the kids were back form boarding school - she doesn't like kids. So maybe she has noticed mrs SB's condition and is already gearing up for the worst. Thankfully, children crying is not considered antisocial behaviour in scotland - so, i'm not unduly worried about having an asbo served on me because I have a crying baby in the house.

fact is, she is just being a pain, - and a pain with a bad attitude. If she had actually asked me to cut the trees back rather than scream over the fence that she was getting her lawyers onto me about it, i might have actually gone and cut them down today. but, i'm not going to let her speak to me like that - especially when she is raising the issue for the 1st time.

[lachlanandmarcus]

Your reply to our feedback sounds very rational and reasonable. I know some neighbours can be a nightmare, my m-in-law once had one  who built a rockery on her drive in the middle of the night to try and annexe it to his garden and put down rat poison in her garden to try to kill her pets......

So yes fully accept there are some mad and bad uns out there! Just try to keep yourself on the side of the angels, as it were....

[mmu]

Like others,I have the greatest sympathy for your situation.  We had the neighbours from hell before we moved here, and when dealing with nasty people we learnt the hard way, you can't win, because they don't have your standards.  Our neighbours went out of their way to be vile because we had the use of a piece of land next to their house that they wrongly thought would be theirs.  We put up with them for probably ten years and then decided that it just wasn't worth making ourselves ill and moved.  There were other circumstances like the road outside becoming one of the busiest trunk roads in England with 24/7 traffic including lorries.  Said neighbours actually thought during the preceding 10 years that because we were decent people with manners we were weak.  My husband got so wound up one day he actually waved a shotgun at the chap - I found out later it wasn't loaded, but the way the blood drained from neighbour's face was a sight to behold, but I decided enough was enough.  When we left they hung a banner out of their bedroom window proclaiming Good riddance!  It would fill a book to tell all the nasty things they did, like swearing at my kids, walking around their garden naked and encouraging their greyhounds to kill my chickens. I still get mad when I think about them 20 years on.  I say cut your losses, and either give in, maybe after the investigating the legality of her claim, or move on.  Sorry and good luck.

[doganjo]

I still think it would be worth looking at TPO's - the council will bang them on double quick if you say you want to cut tehm down.  That would be the PERFECT result! She couldn't get at you for that!