4 Texas Fence Line Disputes That End Up in Court Over a Few Feet
A Houston-area homeowner once refused to tear down a fence that a survey proved sat on his neighbor’s land.
An appeals court made him pay $21,440, according to the report.
These are the Texas fence-line fights that end up in front of a judge over a few feet of land.
Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Property, survey, and homeowners association rules vary by county and community and are subject to change.
1. Ten Years Behind Someone Else’s Fence
A fence dispute over a 20-foot strip of Houston-area land once reached the Texas Supreme Court.
Under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, adverse possession lets someone claim land held under a claim that’s “hostile to the claim of another person,” in the statute’s own words, for at least ten straight years.
In West University Place, two families built houses in the 1920s on lots everyone assumed ran 50 feet wide.
The lots ran 55 feet, and the extra strip sat under a driveway both households had shared for decades.
When one family learned the truth from a survey, they fenced off the strip.
The other family sued to keep it in what became Tran v. Macha.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled for the family who put up the fence in 2006.
Decades of sharing the driveway never counted as the “exclusive” possession the statute demands.
Sharing isn’t hostile.
Twenty feet reached the state’s highest court.
Many Texans don’t find out a fence line has been running that clock until a title company flags it during a sale.
What “Peaceable and Adverse” Requires Under Texas Law
Texas’s ten-year rule doesn’t hand over land just because a fence has stood in one spot for a decade.
The statute also requires the person to cultivate, use, or enjoy the land, and the true owner’s permission at any point resets the clock to zero.
Without a deed backing the claim, Texas caps an adverse possession claim at 160 acres, unless the enclosed land runs larger than that.
Few disputes ever get close to that ceiling.
Most, like the Houston-area driveway strip above, run a matter of feet.
2. Just a Few Feet Over the Line
Texas gives an encroaching fence exactly one legal fix.
State law calls it “trespass to try title,” under Texas Property Code Chapter 22, and it’s the only method Texas allows for settling who owns a strip of disputed ground.
A Houston-area dispute shows how far it can go, according to Texas A&M AgriLife’s agriculture law blog.
A homeowner’s fence crossed onto his neighbor’s property.
Trash piled up along the line.
Starting in 2017, the neighbor asked him to take it down, and he refused, even after a survey backed up the neighbor’s claim.
Texas’s Fourteenth Court of Appeals sided with the neighbor, the blog reports, ruling that refusing to remove the fence counted as trespass even though the homeowner never personally set foot on the disputed strip.
The bill for removing and replacing it came to $21,440, according to the blog’s account of the ruling.
Not one square inch of new land changed hands.
Big bill.
3. When Two Surveys Don’t Agree
A Texas court once settled a property line fight over a strip of land barely a foot wide, based on where a wooden fence had stood since 1976.
Texas courts don’t ask which surveyor showed up more recently.
They ask a stranger question: Where did the original surveyor walk?
Under what Texas courts call the “footsteps of the surveyor” rule, a monument found on the ground can outrank the distances written in the field notes.
In Del Rio, two neighboring landowners each hired a surveyor.
Both surveyors measured from that same old fence line and landed in different places.
One survey put the true boundary 1.1 feet from the fence.
The other put it 3.46 feet away, in B&P Development v. Knighthawk.
One landowner had already torn out the old fence and built over the disputed sliver.
San Antonio’s Fourth Court of Appeals sided with the survey that matched where the fence used to stand, awarding the strip to the neighbor who never built on it.
A few feet decided it.
The old fence had been right all along.
When no fence or monument survives at all, Texas appeals courts fall back on a set order of evidence instead.
Natural landmarks come first, then physical markers, then compass direction, then plain distance.
A court doesn’t let a newer fence overrule that hierarchy just because it’s stood there a while.
4. Inside the Setback by a Few Feet
In Texas, a homeowners association (HOA) doesn’t need to own the ground under a fence to sue over it.
Recorded deed restrictions can set a fence’s setback, height, or material, and the Texas Property Code lets an HOA sue to enforce them.
Civil damages can run up to $200 for every day the violation continues.
Every single day.
A homeowner whose fence sits a few feet inside a setback line, or a few inches over a height cap, can rack up that daily penalty long after the last board goes up.
Being fully inside your own lot line isn’t a defense on its own.
Height Limits Come From the City, Not the State
Texas leaves fence height to the city, and the numbers vary more than many homeowners assume.
San Antonio caps a residential front-yard fence at 3 feet if it’s solid, or 5 feet if it’s mostly see-through.
Not much.
Side and rear yards get more room, up to 6 feet.
Even an industrial lot tops out at 8 feet under that city’s own fence rules.
Corner lots carry their own rule on top of the height cap, a required sight-visibility triangle that keeps a fence from blocking a driver’s view of cross traffic.
A fence a foot or two over a city’s cap doesn’t need a neighbor to complain.
A code inspector can flag it on sight, no lawsuit required.
How Texas Fence Fights Usually Skip the Courtroom
Texas fence-line law sounds like it’s built for lawsuits, but many disputes never get anywhere near one.
Texas’s State Law Library points neighbors toward informal and formal boundary agreements long before trespass to try title ever comes up.
Two neighbors who agree on a line, in writing, generally settle it for good without ever hiring a lawyer.
No judge needed.
And when a case does land in court, it usually doesn’t go to a district judge.
Texas justice courts can hear civil money disputes worth up to $20,000, under Government Code Section 27.031, things like the cost of tearing down a fence or an unpaid HOA penalty.
That same statute carves out one exception.
A suit to decide who owns the ground under a fence, a trespass-to-try-title case, still has to go to a county or district court instead.
A written boundary agreement, signed and filed with the county, ends many of these fights before a lawyer ever gets a call.
A dispute over who pays to tear the fence down can still land in front of a justice of the peace, while a fight over who owns the ground goes to county or district court instead.
Psst! How much do you know about Texas fence and boundary law? Flip each card and see how many you already had right.
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