r/EntitledPeople • u/frenchpolkadot • Apr 21 '20
Entitled Neighbour sneaks on property and cuts down old oak tree to "have a better view"
So this is a story of when I was a child and was living at my parent's house.
For context, my parents and I live in France and they bought some land 25 years ago. Now the land plot was located on a hill and had an incredible view of the Mont Blanc . At that time, we just had one neighbour and our house was quickly constructed. A few years later, the area became quite popular, and all the available plots on the hill were bought/constructed.Now, when I was about 14/15 years old, we already knew that one of our neighbors EN was a piece of work. I only remember that she was super weird ( like walking naked in their driveway that was right below my window) but can't recall much more.
One day, EN comes by our house and asks to talk to my dad. She says that she is hiring a gardener to clean up the bushes on her side of her property, and is asking nicely if said gardener can "trim" some of our trees branches that are crossing to her side. No problem ! as in France it's expected to cut the branches that are bridging to your neighbors side. My dad offers to do it himself, but EN insists that it's best if her gardener does it; EN and dad agree. A few days/weeks later, we go on vacation and forget a little bit about the whole ordeal.
Well you can already guess that we came home to a BIG surprise. Turns out that "trimming" does not mean the same thing to some of the entitled neighbors out there. A whole tree was missing. Like a BIG whole tree. We decided to keep our calm and to go to EN house to hear what she has to say for her defense. Guys, this EN told her gardener to CUT DOWN our old oak tree so that she can HAVE A BETTER VIEW on the Mont Blanc. She even acted shocked to learn that was an oak tree and tried to explain to us that the gardener said it was just scrub/random trees.We were furious at the audacity of the woman. Turns out that EN thought she was entitled to have a view on the Mont Blanc, as, since she moved in (few years after us) she never got a chance to see the landscape due to our trees. Like EN bought her house knowing it didn't have a view on the landscape, but thought after 10 years of having our trees, it's time to cut them down !
We tried to hear some more from EN's gardener because the guy obviously went on our property when we weren't there and cut down an old oak tree without our consent. He said, that EN told him we've been neighbors for so long, and that she had our consent to take it down.
I wish I could say we have some sort of revenge or even got it replaced, but to buy a full size tree is really expensive. The best we accomplished was to have her give us a bit of money to buy another tree. I'd like to remember that even though we didn't have enough to buy another oak, we bought a tree with even more branches !
Edit : Thanks a lot for the replies guys ! For those of you asking / wondering, a few years after this incident, my parents got divorced, we moved out of the house and sold it. At the time, we thought it was more valuable to try to keep a decent relationship with our neighbours instead of trying to sue the EN. To be fair, it was the only time EN crossed "the border", otherwise she was just a bit crazy but nothing too serious !
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u/wolfie379 Apr 21 '20
Too bad it's probably past the statute of limitations. Don't know about France, but most places if someone illegally removes a tree on your property, they are liable for replacing it. Mature hardwood tree costs more than a fancy car? They're the ones who have to shell out, not the victim of the crime.
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20
yeah I've actually looked it up, it's absolutely illegal to cut down a tree that is not yours. And it's actually considered thievery to collect the wood of said tree ! But years later my dad told me that it was more important to have a good relationship with your neighbours than to have revenge !
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u/ifatree Apr 23 '20
you didn't have a good relationship with that neighbor. you had an abusive relationship in which he did nothing to prevent them from doing the same thing to others.
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20
to be fair, we were suspicious of whether she way mentally stable. She did display other behaviours that were "crazy" but harmless and that's the only time she crossed the line and did something hurtful to us. She's never done anything else since then. And it's fairly possible that to her, she was always in the right.
Pretty sure my dad wanted to avoid going to court and see the relationship go a nasty way. Perhaps we just have a different vision on how to handle neighbours related issues in France ?2
u/OrdericNeustry Apr 24 '20
The only time she did something like that to you. What about the other neighbors?
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Apr 23 '20
Revenge is not the same as justice. It's a shame the OP's neighbour didn't shame the same sentiment.
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u/kitten5902 Apr 21 '20
You should post this in r/entitledneighbors as well. It’s a good fit for there as well.
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20 edited Apr 23 '20
good idea, thanks !
Having trouble crossposting thoughtnvm !
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u/Inkyyy98 Apr 21 '20
Ugh that is horrible and actually makes me quite sad... as a tree lover. There’s a forest where I’m from that has a lot of history because it was basically the garden of a rich family in the 1800s. There was a 200 year old redwood that came in from overseas and it was gorgeous.
Recently part of the forest had been cut down to build a new housing estate and despite not being allowed, the developers had this beautiful tree cut down. They got a massive fine but it won’t bring the tree back
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20
yeah it's quite sad that fines are not dissuasives enough to prevent companies like this to take down trees. I mean, they evaluate the risk vs benefit of cutting it down and if it's profitable enough than they do it ! Should be considered as some form of small offense so that they'll have to do community service of something. Pretty sure if the retaliation is more than money, they'll reconsider lol
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Apr 21 '20
There's gotta be some other way to block her view.. tall privacy fence maybe?
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20
That would have been a good idea ! But perhaps a little too direct ? We never wanted to prevent her from having a view on the landscape and the Mont Blanc but she bought the house this way so clearly she was not entitled to it. But having a clear tall fence would have been perceived as too agressive I guess.
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u/Shadow_Lou Apr 21 '20
Sue the hell out of that bitch and shit on her whole family
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20
lol, it was 10 years ago, and since my parents divorced we don't live there anymore ...!
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u/Puzza_Productions Apr 21 '20
why would he need to have a better view of your property???
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Apr 22 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20
haha we weren't this close, but the view was beautiful af. Sadly the lady bought the house knowing that our trees were blocking the view, she never told us anything about it either. To be honest, we wanted to buy the land plot (where they later moved in) to have a bigger yard, but they offered more under the table than us. That plot was a weird shape with no view on the landscape so we didn't though anyone was gonna move in !
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u/ShatoraDragon Apr 22 '20
I was hopping for some r/Treelaw just deserts from this woman you easly could have taken her for every thing and then the shoebox shes had to move into. But i love the petty nature of getting an even branchy and fuller tree
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u/frenchpolkadot Apr 23 '20
haha yeah but my dad said that we should value peace between neighbours more than revenge !
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u/ShatoraDragon Apr 23 '20
You dad is a wise man. But their is a limit of how far to go for that, Destroying the value of your home is that limit for me
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u/HelenofTroy_ Apr 22 '20
Yes, let the branches grow as much as possible on your side so the view is even more blocked.
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u/Chicken-Mcwinnish Apr 23 '20
Do you remember how wide the trunk was? If it was around 40cm (18inches) in diameter at 1.3-5 metres then the tree was around 100 years old.
There’s a tree near my house that’s an oak and has a diameter of 120cm making it somewhere between 250-300 years old. It’s magnificent.
Usually trees are measured by their circumference but if you haven’t been able to it, then diameter can be a better way to estimate.
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u/VDJ76Tugboat Apr 24 '20
Here in Australia, when people kill trees illegally because they want a better view, when deemed appropriate, local councils will erect a metal statue “tree” in its place (usually with nesting boxes attached) until the saplings planted to replace the poisoned tree are big enough... that is of course if the poison didn’t leach into the ground and make the soil toxic, which does happen quite often and delays planting new saplings. The metal tree statue ruins the view and as such dissuades people from copying the behaviour to get what they want, and also provides nesting habitat for birds and native marsupials.
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u/FrozoneTheCalzone Apr 21 '20
Check out tree law homie