u/ComprehensiveEbb4978

We bought a house with a wooden fence that is falling apart. Whole sections are breaking and falling into the neighbor’s yards now.

We have 3 neighbors and for simplicity sake, assume the neighbor on the left is the west neighbor, the neighbor facing forward is north, and the neighbor on the right is the east neighbor. As it stands today, our fence is half a foot onto the west neighbors property. It is also 1 to 2 feet on the north neighbors property. We have talked to both neighbors to introduce ourselves to them upon moving in. The west neighbor is interested in going in on a new fence and mentioned that his wife would want to be included in discussions on a new fence. The north neighbor is an elderly lady, and we did not broach the conversation when we met her.

Now, an option could be that we replace the fence on the west side and build a new fence on the north side that’s on our property line, leaving the existing fence that is over onto the neighbors property line and replacing the east side of the fence. However, this whole scenario is giving me a headache every day and I am not sure what the right answer is here. Has anyone gone through this or have any thoughts on what we should do in this situation? The fence is not on the east neighbors property at all so we are OK to tear it down and replace.

My ideal solution would be that we tear down the entire fence and replace it with a new fence that is on our property, however, this is complicated because there are sections of the fence that are not on our property and are adjoined against fences on other neighbors property