What are my rights over a shared driveway?
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Andrea Clitheroe from Wigan
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Legal questions and answers
Question
We have a shared driveway with right of way. Several years ago we had a fence erected, with the agreement of the neighbour, and the kerbs dropped at each property so that we would both benefit from a driveway each. The work was carried out at our expense and one day I came home to find that part of the fence has been ripped up. What are my rights in taking action? Our neighbours haven't spoken to us about it, nor asked for permission to remove the fence and the materials they have removed are nowhere to be seen. Is this a legal matter or a criminal matter? Please advise.
Answer
Without sight of the Title Deeds it is difficult to provide a definitive answer to your question. Based on the information provided your best right of recourse would be to engage a litigation lawyer as there could be a potential criminal claim for destruction of property but you are likely to be more successful raising a civil litigation claim.
Depending on what remedy you are seeking would affect the claim made by the litigation solicitor. If it is a shared drive then unfortunately there is little that can be done from a conveyancing perspective.
We are presuming that an official split of the ground in question was not drawn up and registered on erection of the fence. If this is indeed the case we could of course draw up documentation to register the split driveway officially, however your neighbour would have to agree to this and sign documentation to allow this to proceed so it would depend on their co-operation. If this was something you would like to pursue from a litigation point of view then our firm could continue to assist as we also have litigation lawyers who specialise in debt recovery.
Kayleigh MacLaren, Aberdein Considine
Kayleigh McLaren
Aberdein Considine
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