Divine Grace 8: Absentee landlord-neighbor appears at the right time!

Here is an episode where I describe how two unrelated happenings came in handy to save me from a big expense.

I bought my present house in the year 2008.  In this part of the country people rarely build a wall around their property.  The house I bought is in an old neighborhood and the house itself was built in the early 1980s.  There were fences in the rear and sides.

Before buying the property, We go through detailed procedures to ensure that the property is free and clear.  The property boundaries are available in what is called the legal plat available from the city or county office.

I was perhaps the third owner of this property.  We do not bother about surveying to verify the property boundaries when we buy the property even though there is no permanent structure to define the boundaries of properties.

Around 2010 or so, something pushed me to have my property surveyed.  I engaged a property surveyor and got the property surveyed to match with the legal plat.  I got the property corners established.  This helped me realize that the fence along the Eastern side of my property was about 11 feet inside my property.  I was able to convince my neighbor and got the existing fence removed and put a new fence, thus reclaiming 11 feet of land along the Eastern boundary.

Fast forward to  December 2016.  One cold morning I got a phone call.  The male voice at the other end said something about a tree.  I thought some tree service outfit was trying to sell me some tree service and responded accordingly.  It turned out it was my neighbor to my rear (South of us) was calling to report that a tree from my property had fallen and caused damage to his property.  I went to that side of my house and was shocked to find the damage to his deck and a window.   (By God's grace, nobody was hurt or injured.  The occupants are a couple and a boy 7 or 8 years old.)

I called my home insurance company and they started processing the claim.  The tree that fell was a dead tree.  As per Georgia law, if the dead tree of one owner caused damage to another property, then the owner of the tree is liable.   Next day I went out to my back yard to see the fallen tree at close quarters.  I was able to see that the tree was not in my property after all.  This I was able to notice as the property corner pin set  by the surveyor was still there and the tree was well outside of that corner.

I called my home insurance company as well as my neighbor to explain this and had hard time convincing them because the tree was to my side of the fence separating my property and the neighbor's property!

At this point I need to mention one more item:  The owner of the property to my west does not live here; nor was the house rented and hence it was unoccupied.  The yard was maintained by some maintenance crew but I saw the owner - an elderly lady - only once or twice since 2008.  She was in Pennsylvania attending to here aged father and was visiting here for a brief stay of a day or two.

The dead tree that caused damage was in her property as established by my property survey.

As I was struggling and stressing how to convince my home insurance company and my south-side neighbor, this lady appeared out of the blue!  I could meet her and she said she was fixing to move in shortly.  I was able to take her to where the tree was and show her the dead tree that caused the damage was in her property.

That helped resolve my dilemma and I was off the hook as far as the liability for the damage was concerned.

Now, that lady did not move and has not shown herself again since that visit of 2017 January (as of December 2018)!