A tree hangs onto your neighbor’s property: Who pays to trim it?

It’s a common and old quandary:  A tree growing from your land has branches or roots intruding onto your neighbor’s property, or vice versa.  So . . . whose responsibility is it to trim the encroaching branches?

The answer, in Florida, straight from caselaw, is:

A possessor of land is not liable to persons outside the land for a nuisance resulting from trees and natural vegetation growing on the land. The adjoining property owner to such a nuisance, however, is privileged to trim back, at the adjoining owner’s own expense, any encroaching tree roots or branches and other vegetation which has grown onto his property.

Scott v. McCarty, 35 Fla. L. Weekly D1726a (Fla. 4th DCA, Aug. 4, 2010) (quoting Gallo v. Heller, 512 So. 2d 215, 216 (Fla. 3d DCA 1987)).

The rationale? According to caselaw, it is wiser to let an individual protect herself than to subject a landowner to the annoyance of likely innumerable lawsuits.