California E&S Insurance

Neighbor built fence 8ft into the property 10 years ago. How to not be enemy but tell them to move it? My husband and I bought a home from my husband’s parents. Before this, they had tenants living there for 10+ years and tenants never contacted his parents for any issues because rent was super cheap for them. after the tenants moved out, the parents went to look around and saw a fence was erected in the backyard. We did a survey on the land and found out this fence is 8ft into our property line. We knew this would be an awkward topic, so actually our contractor offered to be a 3rd party and go over and talk to them about it along with a letter signed by us asking if they could move it back. The neighbor said they went to all of their neighbors and asked if they could put up the fence 10 years ago (tenant never said anything and there is no written proof) and they paid $12k for it. They said it would cost $2200 to move it back and told our contractor that we should be the ones paying for it. I’m not sure it’s really fair since we had no idea and there’s no written proof that they even asked our parents. We’d be willing to pay for half just to be be on somewhat friendly terms with them. Don’t want to start off on the wrong foot in a new neighborhood. We’re planning to talk to them in person this weekend but wanted to get some thoughts on how to approach this with them and not be dicks about it. EDIT: Did not expect this post to get this much traction. To add more context, we live in California. Yea, parents never looked at the property. Too late to do anything about it now. No one really had any idea until we started looking around the house to do construction and the contractor mentioned we may have more land. That’s when we did the survey and found out. I did a general google search and it says adverse possession occurs after 5 years if they pay the property taxes as well in CA. Highly doubt they did so I don’t think they would win in court. Currently trying to set up a call with a real estate attorney to get the full picture of what our options are and if what I googled was even right. People are saying on here to not be a doormat neighbor, but we def don’t want to have bad relations. Especially looking down the future and our kids lose a ball over the fence or something… it would be a nightmare. We’re going to go over there tomorrow to talk with them. We will first try to be friendly and only offer to pay $1100 (since that’s what they quoted our contractor and not willing to pay extra if something comes up). If they reject, then we will play hardball and try to get a letter/go further. Thanks for all the input!

{
  "score": 0,
  "title": "Neighbor built fence 8ft into the property 10 years ago. How to not be enemy but tell them to move it?",
  "subreddit": "RealEstate",
  "num_comments": 147,
  "scrape_method": "apify_targeted"
}