I just acquired property from my parents. The neighbors to the left of my property have a garage that is built partly on my property. What are my rights? It was built years ago when the current neighbors did not live there. Can I make them move it? Or what can I do?
This is in Ohio. My property is only a half acre and the neighbors also have a chain link fence extended from the back corner of the garage to the back property line.
What can I do?
Thank you

First, what is your evidence? Are your parents alive? Sometimes 'agreements' are made without going on the deed.
Second, have you talked to the neighbors in a friendly way?
Third, when was the garage built (looking at town records such as permits), and when was the fence put in?

Ohio law regarding adverse possession is "exclusive possession and open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use of the disputed property for a period of twenty-one years." This includes successive owners and heirs under something called privity.

If you can show that something has been there less than 21 years, you can simply order the new owners to take it down. If they don't, you can take it down yourself (or you can do that from the first, but why cause enemies if you can avoid it)? Any wrongs they feel they endured are against their real estate appraiser/inspector/title company, etc - not your concern.

If it's been more than 21 years, they have the burden of filing for Quiet Title and proving their claim. If they don't, you can't just cut part of the garage off (technically you 'can' if you don't destroy what's over the line). I had a neighbor who did that to another neighbor and all hell broke loose.

You can take down the fence if they don't file for title.

If you can get by with the garage there, consider offering to sell an easement. It's a lot cheaper than selling the actual plot of land.

You may find that there is no record of when the garage was built, especially if there was no permit. Then you get into a legal hassle that's quite involved.

As joy has said what you are talking about is called adverse possession. But I have to wonder whether you are correct about the property lines. You are saying the structure was built before the current owners purchased. That means, if they had a title search done when they purchased, this issue should have come up. So something might have been done about it at the time or you may be wrong about the property lines.

So before you do anything, you need to make sure where the property lines are. Then you need to find out how long the structure has been there.

You need to start with having a survey done... and the lines marked. Until you have that's everything else is moot. Sometimes property lines are not actually where people think they were. I've seen cases where its been 15 feet from where they thought it was.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

if they had a title search done when they purchased, this issue should have come up.

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Actually, a title search would not reveal an encroachment over the property line. That would have taken a survey.

A title search would show any easements and it might show where the property lines are.

The deed will "show" OP's property line (a word-by-word description of it, anyway; not a map). A title search will "show" any recorded instruments which would tend to modify that property line (an easement conveyed by someone in the chain of title, perhaps). But if someone has built something across that property line, that would not show. A title search will only show documents that have been recorded.

Agree, most likely at this point, most of the rights, are vested with the neighbors who bought the property in good faith of the fence being the property line.

At this point, you get a new survey done, but it is most likely, that they will get ownership of that section of property because of usage all those years. But that will be for a court to decide.

I guess why, if your parents had no issue with it, do you want to "do something" now