6 Tennessee Rules That Change the Day a Homeowner Puts Up a Fence

Fence materials aren’t cheap, and tearing out a fence you built wrong costs that much more.

Tennessee homeowners run into different fence rules depending on the city, the land next door, and what’s under their soil.

Here are the rules to know before you spend a dollar on lumber.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. State laws and city codes are subject to change.

1. Partition Fences

A fence you build on the line between your lot and a neighbor’s is a partition fence under Tennessee law.

That label has money attached.

A neighbor who joins your fence, or starts using it as a partition fence, owes you their proportion of the expense.

The payment goes to the person who erected the fence, which would be you.

2. Nashville’s Height and Setback Limits

In Metro Nashville, the local fence code needs no permit at this time, the codes department says, but it still limits how tall your fence can be.

Inside the 10-foot front setback, the strip of your yard nearest the street, a solid fence can reach only 30 inches.

An open fence, such as chain link or wrought iron, gets up to 72 inches inside that setback.

Past that strip, Nashville lets a fence reach 72 inches until you get to the front of your house.

Own a corner lot?

Metro’s code doesn’t allow fences inside a corner lot’s 35-foot visibility zone, but lots in the Urban Zoning Overlay don’t have to meet it.

If your home sits in a Historic Preservation or Historic Landmark Overlay, though, you need a Preservation Permit from the department.

Zoning overlays and homeowners’ associations may have further restrictions.

3. Post Holes and 811 Notice

A fence starts with post holes, and Tennessee’s Underground Utility Damage Prevention Act treats them differently from other digging.

The act defines excavation to include digging by hand, boring and drilling.

Not every hole counts.

The definition excludes fence post holes on private property outside a recorded easement of an operator and more than 100 feet from a street or highway’s pavement edge.

An operator is anyone who owns or operates a utility.

So your post hole needs 811 notice only inside such an easement or within 100 feet of a street or highway’s pavement edge, and nowhere else on your private property.

That’s a plain reading of the rule, not a promise about your particular lot.

If you’re in doubt, call 811.

4. Barbed Wire and Easements

Metro Code 16.04.200 sets the materials rules for a Nashville fence.

Barbed wire and electric fences are generally prohibited or restricted in residentially zoned areas.

With few exceptions, you can’t top a fence with barbs or sharp projections.

Those exceptions cover a fence five feet or more from a property line, or more than seven feet above the ground and projecting inward.

Easements are different.

You can build a fence over an easement in Nashville, but you’re responsible for rebuilding it if a utility company needs access.

The codes department doesn’t maintain easement records.

5. Knoxville’s Seven-Foot Permit Exemption

Knoxville doesn’t require a building permit for your fence as long as it isn’t over 7 feet high.

The city lists that exemption in section R105.2 of its residential permit requirements, among the work that needs no permit.

Does no permit mean no rules?

Not necessarily.

The exemption doesn’t allow work on your fence that violates the building code or other laws and ordinances.

6. Disclaiming Fence Duty Next to Farmland

Before a fence goes up on the line between your house lot and a neighbor’s farmland, Tennessee Code 44-8-210 lets you disclaim responsibility for building or maintaining it.

Your lot has to meet three conditions.

The land can’t be agricultural land as defined in Tennessee Code 67-5-1004.

It has to be the site of a residence.

Finally, you can’t keep livestock on it.

You have to put the disclaimer in writing and send it by registered mail with a return receipt, or by another method that gives you written proof of delivery.

Keep that proof because the disclaimer takes effect on the date the farmland’s owner receives it.

The disclaimer doesn’t last forever.

The disclaimer ends when your lot stops qualifying as non-agricultural land, such as when you start keeping livestock.

When that happens, you owe the farmland’s owner a proportionate share of the cost of any fence they built while your disclaimer stood.

Lawful Fences and Livestock Damage

Under Tennessee’s livestock-trespass statutes, a lawful fence is one built to the height and spacing the statutes set.

A post-and-plank or post-and-rail fence qualifies at 4 feet high, and a stone fence or wall qualifies at 3½ feet.

Under Tennessee Code 44-8-105, a fence of three barbed wires, planks or slats also qualifies if the posts sit no more than 9 feet apart.

The lowest wire, plank or slat has to sit 18 inches off the ground, with each of the next two 18 inches above the last.

If livestock trespass on your cleared and cultivated ground, you can complain to a general sessions judge.

The judge summons two impartial landowners, called freeholders, who decide whether your fence is lawful and how much damage the animals did.

If the freeholders find your fence insufficient, the animals’ owner isn’t liable for the damage under this process.

A weak fence costs you.

Disputed Fence Costs

If you and a neighbor can’t agree on what a shared fence cost, a general sessions judge can step in.

Either of you can ask.

The judge orders three disinterested freeholders to examine the fence.

Those three decide how much the owner who built or repaired it is owed, whether that’s you or your neighbor.

The livestock-damage process above uses two freeholders.