A retired couple have said they have spent their life savings in a bitter legal battle with their former neighbor over a fence in their shared driveway.
Graham and Katherine Bateson said they have sunk $59,551 (£45,000) in solicitors’ fees since their late neighbor Wendy Leedham put up the fence alongside their bungalow.
The couple sought an order to remove it, saying it blocked access to the car on their property after it was installed in 2019.
Mr. and Mrs. Bateson argued that when they bought their two-bedroom house for $39,039 (£29,500) in 1987, they were told she shared a car with their neighbour.
They said they had been told there was an unmarked boundary between the two properties, on which no building should be built.
But their neighbor took legal advice saying she could put the fence up between properties in Snettisham, Norfolk.
mrs. Bateson, 73, said: “We’ve lived here 32 years with no problems with previous neighbours, they all agreed it was a shared drive.
“We bought it as a shared drive, that’s how it was explained and sold to us.
“I don’t understand how you can do all the checks legally and 30 years later it comes back and bites you in the ass.
“To have all your life savings taken away in that way, when you knew you were right in the first place.”
The trial dragged on for three years until November 2021, when the case went to a mediation hearing.
The hearing ruled that a new deed must be drawn up showing the boundary between the two properties linked by the fence, meaning it can stand.
Wendy Leedham did not live to see the result.
She passed away a month before the hearing in May 2021, at the age of 74.
mrs. The three-bed former Leedham house is now on the market for $496,263 (£375,000) with agents Sowerbys.
The Sowerbys’ 12-page brochure makes no mention of the fence or the boundary dispute and the Batesons fear a new owner could replace it.
mrs. Bateson, a retired factory supervisor, said: “We’re still living in fear that they’re going to put up another fence when there shouldn’t have been one in the first place.”
The Batesons say the joint movement and the open border were later confirmed by a surveyor’s report after the mediation session.
Retired window cleaner Mr. Bateson, 75, took the law into his own hands in September 2022.
He said: “I removed the fence and was arrested for criminal damage.
“They had locked me up for 12 hours on Sunday with no food until midnight.”
Last December, the charge was dropped because the Crown Prosecution Service deemed it was not in the public interest to continue.
Mr. Bateson said that by then, the couple could not continue their legal battle because they could not afford any more, having already spent $59,551 (£45,000).
He said: “We saved and worked hard. Now it’s all gone.”
Both parties have paid their own legal costs.
The fence has not been rebuilt, and the Land Registry has rejected the revised deed because it was not satisfied with the way the Batesons’ signatures were witnessed.
Sowerby’s and Mrs. Leedham’s family has been contacted for comment.
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