Location: South Carolina
So I’ve had a bit of an ongoing issue. I live on a farm in upstate South Carolina. On the property directly bordering mine, I have a neighbor who I have a) never met, b) has not visited their property in over five years.
I heard from the previous owners of my farm, that their property was/is their vacation home, but they never use it. I have found their names via public records, but haven’t been able to get in contact with them.
Several months ago SC got hit with a pretty bad hurricane (Helene), and all of the trees along the neighbors fence line fell into my horse pasture fence line. Unfortunately, they fell at a terrible angle that I can’t just cut the trees that are falling into my fence – they are all leaning / draping over the fence lengthwise. I’m honestly not even sure the owners know all of these trees fell. I have horses in this pasture and need to replace all of the fencing on that side, but I can’t with these huge trees being located where they are. I also can’t pay someone to help remove the trees, because we would need access to their property. I waited some months to see if the owner would do anything/ check if a tree fell on their apparent vacation home, but no dice.
Is there anything I can do legally to have the owners clean up their trees? I don’t care if they’re there, I just need them removed off of my fence and property line. Honestly, I’d be happy to pull them off of the fence myself, but I would need to access their property with a truck and a chain. And without being able to get in touch with the owners I wasn’t sure how to go about it and am obviously not down to just trespass.