Your home is your castle, some castles may even have walls. Fences can improve property value, protect privacy and quiet enjoyment, and can contain otherwise unbowed pets and children. There are two kinds of fences – (1) generic fences, and (2) partition fences. While the term is our creation and not an official legal term, “generic fences,” the fences wholly on your land, belong to you. If it breaks, if it needs repair, if it needs to be repainted, that’s all on you. The front yard fence touching the sidewalk tends to be a generic fence because the fence is usually built within the property boundaries [sidewalks frequently occupy land where the city is granted an easement or where the property owner has a lingering maintenance obligation, so the front yard fence is a fence between “your land” and “your land with a sidewalk on it”].
Partition fences, by contrast, are the fences that border between two properties. The fences are regulated through ORS 96, the laws relating to “Line and Partition Fences.” Through these laws, a homeowner is responsible for half the installation and repair cost of the fences [ORS 96.010], and if the neighbor fails to repair their part of the fence, you can sue to get a court order demanding they repair the fence [ORS 96.020]. If the neighbor fails to rebuild it after that court directive, you can rebuild the darn thing yourself and pursue the neighbor for the value of the repair, and potentially attorney fees for the action [ORS 96.030]. A partition fence cannot be taken down if you expose crops to destruction by taking them down. If no crops are at stake though — the fence or any part of it can be removed with six-month notice, but since you and the neighbor own about 50% of the value of the fence apiece, removal means you would need to pay the neighbor “such sum as is agreed upon by the parties or, if they fail to agree, such sum as is adjudged by two disinterested persons, selected by the parties, which two persons, if they fail to agree, may select a third person, and the three persons shall determine such sum.” [ORS 96.040(2)]. E.g. Fence line between two properties is worth $100. Landowner A wants it down, but Landowner B doesn’t. Landowner A gives 6 6-month notice and offers Landowner B $50, rips down the fence. Landowner B disagrees and thinks the fence is more valuable, so they each pick a friend and the friends agree the fence was actually worth $120 and that Landowner B was owed $60.
Fences always contain the risk of mistakes too. If you build a fence on another person’s land accidentally and you discover the mistake — the next year after the mistake was discovered, you can go onto their land and remove the fence as long as you don’t harm their land. If the neighbor learns you built a fence on their land accidentally, the neighbor is not entitled to “throw down” the fence until the fence has been there for more than one year from the time the mistake was discovered. After that year passes though, the neighbor can go nuts and tear the fence down. Bear in mind that adverse possession is in play with these sorts of fences. In Knapp v. Daily, 96 Or. 100. 327 (1989), two parcels had an old fence between them that meandered and weaved back and forth and one neighbor got tired of it and tore the old fence down to rebuild a laser straight line fence between the properties on the surveyed border line. The neighbor argued that the new fence was on the wrong line because the old fence had been there so long that the old fence line was the boundary line. The neighbor won and was not liable for the cost of the new fence, because it wasn’t built on the borderline.