[stomachmonkey]

I've shared fences with neighbors.

When I bought my 1st house it was fenced on the left and right sides, the back was open as there was nothing but woods back there.

Had Terry who lived on one side and John on the other and each had originally erected their respective fences.

Terry had planted a row of evergreens along the property line so when he put up the fence he put it on his side of the trees effectively giving me 3-4 extra feet of yard space. The trees had been there 20 some odd years and were tremendous. The lower branches spread 15-20 feet into my yard reducing my useable yard space. One day I go out to trim them back. My plan was to go 10-12 feet up so I still had a nice canopy but got some yard space back. My wife is out there approving my plan when Terry comes out. We say hi and I start to tell him what we are up to when the wife chimes in and in typical female fashion completely miscommunicates the plan leaving Terry with the impression that we want to take the trees down entirely. Naturally he flips out a bit teling us we can't do that because they are his trees and are on his property. I correct the communication and he responds, "that's fine with me, need some help?"

On Johns side the fence had started leaning towards my driveway. Was caused by footing on my side starting to give way. I get a bunch of railroad ties and am shoring up that section on my side when John comes out. I tell him what I'm doing and he thanks me then asks how much is his share. I tell him nothing as I was planning on putting in plant beds at the same time so fixing his fence issue was a by product of that anyway. The fence did need some help in other areas and he wanted to replace all 200 ft of it but being retired and on a fixed income it was a little much for his budget. So I told him to get some quotes and let me know how much my half of the bill would be.

Reasonable people can co-exist if they want to.