Edmonton, Alberta - a neighbour wants to move his fence to…

Hello:

This will depend on the property lines as established on the title documents, and it may take a surveyor to identify which neighbour is correct as to the actual property line. Certainly if you are thinking of taking legal action to seek an injunction to prevent him from moving any fence onto your property or affecting any structure on your existing property, you will need the report of a qualified surveyor. Getting that report may be the first step. This will unfortunately involve a fee of likely several hundred dollars.

You could tell the neighbor formally in writing that you are going to be obtaining a surveyor certificate and that they should hold off on taking any action with the fence until that is obtained, and that you will hold them accountable if they do anything with the fence or your property

If the surveyor report indicates that they will be trying to move the fence onto your property or affecting structures on your property, then you could seek a court injunction that would make it illegal for them to take such actions. Or if they go ahead and do it anyway, the court can make a mandatory injunction requiring them to remove any fence that encroaches onto your property. The court would be able to order them to pay you court costs.

A lawyer is not mandatory for this but the law and procedure involved is not simple and an experienced lawyer will be very useful. We are not allowed to refer you to specific lawyers here due to site policies. But the Law Society of Alberta has a free referral service and they have information on that at their web site.

If you find out that the fence has all along been on their side of the property line, then unfortunately the neighbor does have the right to remove or move the fence. There is no law of adverse possession or "squatters rights" to land titles in Alberta. Just because you had been using the land up to the fence all this time does not mean that you would have any legal right to claim that the land has become yours through use. If the surveyor can conclusively say that the land is on the neighbors side of the property line, then the neighbor would get to decide what to do with any structure located on that land.

I hope this is helpful. If you have no further questions, please rate the answer positively, as otherwise the site does not credit me, even if you have paid a deposit. You can still ask follow up questions after rating though, if you wish.