Your neighbor's tree over your yard: who has to say yes

If the tree hanging over your yard stands on your neighbor’s ground, we cannot cut it on your word alone. What we can do is quote it to your neighbor, work both sides on one visit, and tell you at the estimate which parts are yours to decide.

What Tennessee law lets you cut back on your own side is a separate question, and we are not the people to answer it. We are a tree crew, not a law office. If a neighbor will not deal with a tree that is a real problem for you, that is a conversation for a Tennessee attorney, and it is worth having before anyone starts a saw. The rest of this page is the practical half: how a job that crosses a property line actually gets quoted and worked.

Who we take the order from

We take the order from the owner of the ground the trunk stands on. If the tree is on your ground, the estimate comes to you, even when the whole canopy is over somebody else’s roof. If it stands on the other side of the line, we need that owner to say yes before we touch it.

We put it plainly at the end of the write-up for two backyard trees and a neighbor’s maple in Powell in July. The person who owns the tree is the person who has to say yes.

So if the tree that worries you is on the far side of the fence, the first move is a conversation with your neighbor rather than a call to us. We will come and look at it either way, and tell you what we see.

Two properties, two quotes, one crew

Here is the part people do not expect. When the work lands on both sides of a line, we do not write one estimate and split it down the middle. We write two, one to each owner, and we do the work in one visit.

On that Powell job the maple next door was quoted separately and to the neighbor. Two properties, two agreements, one crew and one lift already on the street. Splitting it that way costs less than two separate mobilizations, and it keeps clear who is paying for what.

The same thing happened on eight trees, two service drops and a hillside, a larger Powell job in June. A neighbor’s small front-yard maple was quoted separately and taken out entirely. Adding a neighbor’s small tree will save both you and your neighbor money since the gear is already on site. Ad-ons like these start at a minimum of $700 and increase from there depending on the size of the tree and surrounding obstacles.

Getting the lift into position can cross the line too. On that June job we asked for permission to set the lift on the neighboring property for one part of the work. It was the only position that put the basket where it needed to be. That is a question we have to ask rather than something we can assume, and it is worth raising at the estimate instead of on the morning of the work.

When the tree is yours and the risk is theirs

It runs the other way too. An eighty-foot maple over a carport in Knoxville stood in the customer’s own back yard, with its canopy hanging over the neighbor’s carport. Nothing about that carport could take a falling limb, so the tree could not come down in one piece until it had been taken apart in the air.

That is a removal where what sits underneath decides the method. The first day was all lift work: out at the far ends of the limbs first, working in toward the trunk, then starting at the top and working down, so nothing over the carport was ever heavier than what we could control. With the canopy gone, the main trunk was felled into the open yard.

Vines running up the trunk had hidden how thick that tree really was. It was not until the wood was on the ground that the diameter showed.

Trimming to the line, and what trimming will not fix

Where a tree is sound and only the overhang is the problem, pruning is often the whole job. On the July Powell maple a bad spar on the left side came off entirely, and the rest of the tree got a light trim rather than a hard reduction, worked from the lift.

A property line is also a direction to take weight off. On the June job a large hickory stood right on the line. It was trimmed off the lift first to get weight off the property-line side, then rigged and felled the same way the other hardwoods went, downhill into the woods behind the house.

What trimming will not fix is a tree that is failing. If what hangs over your yard is dead wood on a dying tree, taking the overhang off buys time and nothing else, and the honest answer is removal. On a neighbor’s tree, that answer is still theirs to act on.

Lines that are not property lines

Not every line across a job is a boundary. On five Douglas firs in Andersonville, a job that ran two full days, a hardwood leaned out over the road and over a neighboring electric line. That one did not get started until the neighbor arranged the service drop for the duration of the work. Trimming live limbs over somebody else’s service is a job to do with the line dead, not a job to do carefully. Which wire belongs to whom is its own question, and who cuts trees near power lines works through it.

That Andersonville job is also where we turned work down. Part of the far property-line trim never got priced, because it ran into extensive landscaping work, which is a different trade from tree work. We said so and left those portions out. The rest of the property line got trimmed back.

Your own tree, and the duty that comes with it

One thing worth knowing about the tree you do own. University of Tennessee Extension’s publication on tree owner’s rights and responsibilities describes ownership as having two halves, and states the second one directly: “Tree ownership also requires certain duties on our part to prevent our trees from becoming a nuisance or a liability.”

What those duties come to in an actual dispute is a lawyer’s question again, not ours. And if you want to know whether your insurer would have any part in it, ask your insurer that before anything comes down rather than after.

What to do next

Walk the line and work out which trunks stand on your ground. Talk to your neighbor about the ones that do not. Then book a free estimate and we will look at all of it, both sides, and tell you which parts we can quote to you and which parts need somebody else’s signature. We work Powell and most of north Knoxville, and you can reach us at 865-360-6685.