The 1974 Plat Map That Ended Our Driveway War

Twenty-two inches. That is what stood between my CR-V and the garage frame on the morning of May 9, my wife holding a tape measure flat against an arborvitae branch while the neighbor's sprinkler arc soaked her left shoe, and both of us already knowing the tree had to move but not yet knowing whose permission actually mattered.

The driveway between our house and Dale's is a shared strip, 20 feet wide, running the length of both lots, and our deed describes it as per recorded easement in a sentence neither household had read closely until this spring. Dale closed on his place in January. By the third week of April he had planted a privacy hedge down what he treated as his own yard line, and the CR-V stopped fitting thru the gap with the mirrors out. We park one car in a one-car garage. The other one lives outside, or did, til the trees arrived.

The fix cost us $1,389 in fees, took seven weeks of spring, and came down to a map drawn in 1974 that nobody in the dispute had ever seen or heard cited. I want to walk thru it in order. The order is the lesson. Start at the trees.

the driveway neither of us owns

Here is the odd part we absorbed first. Neither lot owns the strip. Both deeds grant each owner a right to use the full 20 feet, which is why the original owners' driveways pour as one continuous slab with no seam down the middle. Dale assumed the west 10 feet was his cuz his sprinkler heads are on that side. We assumed nothin', honestly, til the hedge showed up. A driveway you share with no paper in your hand is a driveway with a problem waiting in it.

Dale and his eleven trees

The hedge is eleven arborvitae, $89 each from the nursery on Route 91, planted 30 inches on center in a straight line. As landscaping it looked truly good, and I told him so, because it did. Four of the eleven stood inside the driving surface, and the outermost one clipped 22 inches off the passable width at exactly the point where the garage door needs it. Dale's position was simple and reasonable-sounding: his survey stakes said the line ran there. His stakes said no such thing, it turned out. They marked his irrigation.

the $725 surveyor and his orange flags

So we bought certainty. A licensed surveyor came out on April 30 for $725, ran his equipment for two hours, and drove orange flags into the ground along a line that put the true easement edge 6 feet inside Dale's new hedge. He also stamped a drawing showing the strip labeled joint use driveway, 20 feet, on both parcels. The flags cost extra, $40, and are still in the ground. Dale watched the whole thing from his porch with a coffee mug and did not say a word, which I understood fully.

Rocio pulls the 1974 plat

The drawing was only half of it. Our attorney's paralegal, Rocio, ordered certified copies of the recorded plat from the county recorder for $14, and the document that came back is dated July 1974, drawn when the whole street was a cornfield with streets penciled on it. The plat shows the 20-foot joint driveway easement running between the two lots in a heavy dashed line, notes it as appurtenant to both, and has been sitting in the county's books for 52 years waiting for two neighbors to disagree about a hedge. Eleven arborvitae versus a map from 1974. The map was always gonna win.

what joint use, 20 feet, means

Rocio walked us thru it by phone. Joint use means both households may drive, park, walk, and clear snow on the full width, and neither may build on it or place anything in it that unreasonably blocks the other. No fences, no sprinklers technically, and certainly no hedge. The easement runs with the land, which means it bound Dale the day he bought the house, whether or not anybody ever told him. He had owned the place for 14 weeks and had already planted on ground he did not own.

a letter that cost $650

We retained the attorney anyway, cuz a neighbor conversation backed by flags is one thing and I wanted the record clean if Dale ever sold. Flat fee: $650 for a two-page letter citing the plat, the book and page number, the stamped survey, and a request to relocate the hedge within 21 days. It went out May 12, certified. Dale called me, not the attorney, the next evenin', and the call lasted four minutes and stayed polite the entire time. People are more reasonable when the map is not an opinion.

the hedge moves six feet

He moved the trees himself the first weekend of June, all eleven, replanted along his own west line 6 feet over, and the hedge still screens his patio the way he wanted. Saturday mornin', both of us hauling root balls in his wheelbarrow, his sprinkler soaking my shoes this time for symmetry. Nobody said anything about the lawyers. He did ask what the map had cost, and when I said $14 in copies he laughed for a long time.

the orange flag by the mailbox

The tape measure came out one last time on June 1: 20 feet even, door to door, CR-V through the gap with both mirrors open. The surveyor's last orange flag is still in the ground by our mailbox cuz neither of us has the heart to pull it, and it has become the unofficial property line for the whole block. $725 for the flags, $650 for the letter, $14 for copies of a map drawn when the street was farmland. That is it. That is the whole war.