A New Fence, Two Metres Over the Line, in Kanata

The situation

Grace, a university professor, and her brother Sandro, a professional engineer, had co-owned their late parents' home in Kanata for a little over two years. Neither of them lived in it full time. Grace used it as a base when she was in the city for work and Sandro rented out the lower level to a tenant, and the two of them split the carrying costs and the decisions about the property between them, the way many siblings end up managing an inherited home once the estate has been settled. The property, valued at roughly $950,000, sat on a mature lot with a wooden fence along the side yard that had marked the boundary with the neighbouring property for as long as either of them could remember.

That changed the summer their neighbour, Antonio, decided to replace his aging fence. He hired a contractor, pulled out the old fence, and put up a new one a short distance further onto what Grace and Sandro believed was their side of the line. Neither sibling noticed right away. Sandro's tenant mentioned it first, in an offhand comment about the yard looking smaller, and it was another few weeks before Grace walked the property herself and paced off the difference against old photographs. The new fence appeared to sit roughly two metres inside what they understood to be their property, running the full depth of the side yard.

The legal problem

A fence is not a legal boundary. In Ontario, the actual property line is the one set out in the registered plan of survey and the parcel register, the government-maintained record of who owns a property and what its legal boundaries are. Where a physical fence sits is only evidence of the boundary, and often imperfect evidence at that, since fences get replaced over the decades by contractors working from where the old one stood rather than from a fresh measurement. Antonio believed his new fence matched the old one closely enough. Grace and Sandro believed it did not, and without a current survey, neither side had anything more than an impression to argue from.

The stakes went beyond a strip of lawn. Two metres running the depth of a side yard is a meaningful piece of usable land, enough to affect where a shed could go, how close a driveway could be widened, and eventually what a buyer's own survey would show if either sibling ever sold their share. There was also a harder question sitting underneath the immediate dispute: if the fence had drifted gradually over many years of prior replacements, rather than in one obvious jump this summer, could Antonio or a predecessor have built up a claim to the disputed strip through long-term use, regardless of what the paper boundary said? Ontario largely abolished new claims of that kind, known as adverse possession, once land is registered under the modern Land Titles system, which almost all property in the province now is. But the fact pattern still needed to be checked rather than assumed, because a boundary dispute answered with the wrong legal tool can drag on for years while a straightforward survey and a plain conversation might close it in weeks.

Ontario also has a specific statute for disagreements exactly like this one: the Line Fences Act, which sets out a process for resolving disputes between adjoining owners about where a boundary fence should sit and who pays for it, without needing to start a lawsuit. It was built for situations like Grace and Sandro's, though as a process of last resort rather than a first step.

What we did

1. Pulled the parcel register and the property's survey history first. Our team confirmed the property's Land Titles status and checked what earlier surveys or real property reports existed for either lot, to see whether any prior professional measurement could settle the question without commissioning new work.
2. Arranged for a current survey of the shared boundary. No earlier survey was recent or precise enough to be conclusive, so we recommended a licensed Ontario land surveyor re-establish the legal line using the original registered plan. The survey confirmed what Grace and Sandro suspected: the new fence sat about 1.8 metres onto their property along its full length, a clear and measurable encroachment rather than a matter of interpretation.
3. Assessed the adverse possession angle before ruling it out. We reviewed how long the fence had sat in its various past positions and confirmed the property's title history since it entered the Land Titles system did not support any claim that a possessory right to the strip had matured before conversion. This mattered because it meant the survey result, not a decades-old pattern of use, would govern the outcome.
4. Sent Antonio the survey with a straightforward request rather than a legal threat. Our letter set out the survey findings plainly, explained that the fence appeared to have been built without reference to a current measurement, and asked him to relocate it to the surveyed line at his own cost, since he was the one who had replaced it. We kept the tone factual rather than adversarial, on the view that most neighbours who encroach by mistake will fix it once shown clear evidence, and that starting with cooperation preserves the option of a formal process later if it fails.
5. Held the Line Fences Act process in reserve rather than starting it immediately. That statute lets either owner apply to have a local fence-viewer determine the boundary and the cost split if the neighbours cannot agree, but it takes time and produces a result the parties often could have reached faster by talking. We prepared Grace and Sandro for that route while giving Antonio a reasonable window to respond to the survey directly.
6. Negotiated the cost split for moving the fence. Antonio accepted the survey without dispute once he saw it, but pushed back on paying the full cost of relocating a fence he had just built. We negotiated a resolution where Antonio covered the bulk of the moving cost, reflecting that he had built the encroaching fence, while Grace and Sandro agreed to a modest contribution toward a shared cost neither side had wanted, closing the matter without either party feeling they had lost outright.

The outcome

Antonio's contractor moved the fence to the surveyed line about six weeks after the discrepancy was first raised, well inside the window it would have taken to bring a Line Fences Act application to a hearing, let alone a court application. Grace and Sandro recovered the full width of their side yard, and the two households confirmed the new fence position in a short written exchange referencing the survey, so that any future owner on either side would have a clear paper record of where the line sat and why the fence had moved, rather than relying on memory the way the original dispute had started.

The total cost to Grace and Sandro was the survey fee and a modest contribution toward the fence relocation, both figures in the low thousands rather than anything close to what a contested Line Fences Act hearing or a court application over the strip would have cost in time and legal fees. Because the matter was resolved by agreement rather than through a formal boundary determination, no changes were needed to either parcel's registered description; the survey simply confirmed where the existing legal line had always been; it was the fence, not the boundary, that had moved. Grace and Sandro kept both the property and the relationship with their neighbour intact, which mattered to them given they intended to keep the house in the family for the foreseeable future.

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