My wife and I left town for a long weekend expecting to return to the quiet street we had lived on for years. When we came home, however, something looked completely different next door. Our neighbor Priscilla had started building an addition, and a huge concrete foundation had been poured dangerously close to our property line. At first, I thought it was simply a mistake. Then I noticed that part of the foundation had crossed onto our land.

I checked our old survey and compared it with the markers along the boundary. Several pins were missing. The more I inspected the construction, the more obvious it became that this wasn’t an innocent measuring error. Priscilla had expanded the foundation farther than the plans I had seen before we left. I photographed everything and called a licensed surveyor, who confirmed that the new concrete was sitting on our property. When I confronted Priscilla, she insisted the land was hers and told me I had no right to interfere with her construction. I contacted my attorney, Martha Kline, and brought her the survey, deed, photographs, and every document I had. She studied everything quietly before saying, “Don’t touch that foundation yet. Let me see what we can do.”