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Whose obligation is it to put up a fence

Question:

I recently moved into a house that my neighbor is frum yid lets call him Moshe. The propertys are on two levels. My neighbors is higher & I am lower by 3-4 feet. The old owner of the house (a goy) lets call him Joe had a above ground swimming pool that had a wooden fence that was between Joes property & Moshe. I removed the pool & the wooden fence (both acted as a retaining wall). In its place I hired a company to install a chain link fence that would continue with the existing chain link fence. My neighbor Moshe is not happy with the chain link fence as he says the fence/wall needs to be done with either very thick wood or stone as he is concerned that at a later date the fence will not hold up. My reply is that the chain link fence is working for the old part so no reason it shouldn’t work for the new part. His reply is that the old fence must have roots from a tree or something that is keeping the soil in place. So my question is can he force me to put up a stone retaining wall instead of the chain link fence (a lot more money), if he can force me does he have to share the expense with me? Or can I leave the chain link fence for now? Please see attached picture that show all this. Thank you.

Attached:

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Answer:

Before one removes a retaining wall one must receive an evaluation of an engineer-otherwise you will be damaging your neighbor. Therefore, I think you and your neighbor should agree on a licensed practicing engineer to write an official opinion and act accordingly and I think you should pay the fee since you did “construction” and one must do it properly lest he damage others and this is an expense of building

Yosef Fleischman

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