Retired couple lose life savings in bitter feud with neighbor over fence

A retired couple have said they’ve spent their life savings in a bitter legal row with their former neighbor over a fence put up on their shared driveway.

Graham and Katherine Bateson said they have sunk $59,551 (£45,000) into lawyers’ fees since their late neighbor Wendy Leedham placed the fence alongside their bungalow.

The couple sought an injunction to have it taken down, saying it obstructed the entrance to the drive of their property after it was put up in 2019.

The Batesons argued that when they bought their two-bedroom house for $39,039 (£29,500) in 1987, they were told it shared a drive with their neighbor.

They said they were told there was a featureless boundary marked between the two properties which should not be built on.

But their neighbor obtained legal advice saying she could put the fence up between the properties in Snettisham, Norfolk.

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Katherine Bateson, 73, said, “We’d lived here 32 years without any problems with the previous neighbors, they all agreed it was a shared drive.

“We bought it as a shared drive, that’s how it was explained to us and sold to us.

“I don’t understand how you can have all the checks done legally and 30 years later it comes back and bites you on the bum.

“To have all your life savings taken away like that, when you knew you were right in the first place.”

Litigation dragged on for three years until November, 2021, when the case went to a mediation hearing.

The hearing ruled a new deed should be drawn up showing the boundary between the two properties aligned with the fence, meaning it could stay.

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Wendy Leedham did not live to see the outcome.

She passed away months before the hearing in May 2021 at the age of 74.

Leedham’s three-bed former home is now on the market for $496,263 (£375,000) with agents Sowerbys.

Sowerbys’ 12-page brochure makes no mention of the fence or the boundary dispute and the Batesons fear a new owner could replace it.

Katherine, a retired factory supervisor, said, “We’re still living in fear they will put another fence up when there shouldn’t have been one in the first place.”

The Batesons say the shared drive and open boundary was later confirmed by a surveyor’s report after the mediation hearing.

Retired window cleaner Graham Bateson, 75, took the law into his own hands in September 2022.

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He said, “I took the fence down and I got arrested for criminal damage.

“They had me locked up for 12 hours on a Sunday with no food until midnight.”

Last December, the charge was dropped because the Crown Prosecution Service deemed it was not in the public interest to proceed.

Graham said by then, the couple could not continue their legal fight because they could no longer afford to.

He said: “We saved and worked hard. It’s all gone now.”

Both parties paid their own legal costs.

The fence has not been rebuilt, while the Land Registry has rejected the revised deed because it was not happy with the way the Batesons’ signatures were witnessed.

Sowerby’s and Leedham’s family were contacted for comment.

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