This Week's Q & A

Q: We live next door to the real estate broker through whom we purchased our house. Since we moved in, she has complained incessantly that the pine needles and leaves from our trees are falling on her lawn. She says it is our legal responsibility to trim the branches overhanging her property and either remove the yard waste or pay for its removal. Is that true?

A: No, at least, not entirely. As the owner of the trees, you are responsible for trimming them and preventing them from damaging your neighbor’s property. If the overhanging branches annoy her, she should ask you to trim them (which she’s done). If you choose not to do that work, she can do it herself, at her own expense. She can’t do any trimming on your lot, and she can’t do anything that would harm the trees; if she does, you could sue her for damages. But she can trim branches that are hanging over the property line.

If one of your trees posed a serious threat – for example, if it was diseased and likely to fall on her home – she could insist that you do something about it and probably obtain a court order requiring action if you refused. But pine needles and leaves falling on the ground hardly represent the kind of serious threat to which a court is likely to respond. The need to rake leaves periodically is a fairly predictable, albeit annoying, byproduct of homeownership that should neither shock nor offend your neighbor. If it does, that’s her problem, not yours. She doesn’t have to remove the leaves from her lawn if she doesn’t want to, but she can’t require you to do the raking or to pay for it.