A Massachusetts homeowner says a neighbor behind their house crossed a line that wasn’t just about yard appearance—it was about soil, drainage, and who gets to touch what. In a detailed account shared in the original post, the resident described neighbors hiring laborers to remove multiple large boulders from what the homeowner says is their side of the property line.
Those rocks weren’t landscaping flair, the homeowner said. They’d been sitting for decades at the top edge of a drainage ditch and were effectively acting as a retaining barrier, helping prevent erosion along the ditch line.
The disagreement started at a drainage ditch and an old line of boulders
According to the homeowner’s account, the properties meet at a drainage ditch near the back border. The ditch itself sits on the neighbor’s side, and the neighbor’s house is part of a development with an HOA that handles general maintenance of the ditch.
The homeowner said their property line begins at the top of that ditch, where roughly a dozen or more boulders have been in place for decades. Over time, the rocks functioned like a retaining wall—an unglamorous but important job when water is moving through a channel close to homes.
Trespassing complaints had been building for two years
The neighbor moved in about two years ago, the homeowner wrote, and the boundary friction started not long after. The homeowner said they repeatedly caught the neighbor on their side of the property, including one incident where brush on the homeowner’s side was being removed because the neighbor “didn’t like the way it looked.”…