Background

As you’ve been able to read on the main page of this subject, we sold some land and provided an easement to get to the land, and then the new owner tried to take us for a ride by claiming the easement as their property. To understand this sequal better, please read the main article first.

So, what’s up now?

While our daughter was mowing the grass, the neighbour dropped by to inform her that it was illegal for us to access their road, the easement road, to access our property. He claimed that the first five or six meters of their road were not on our property, and we could therefore not use that first part of the road.

On the spot, our daughter made the wise decision to inform him that she had nothing to do with any of that, and he instead should inform her parents if he felt he had something to say. He mentioned his lawyer had said we could not do that and he’d sue us if we used the road again, and call the police – unsure in what order. After finishing mowing, she informed me about the conversation, and I’ve been waiting for the bell to ring since. It has not.

What now?

My first thought was to use the road and see what happens. On second thought, I decided to call the Land Office again on Monday – today is Sunday – and ask the judicial department for their input in this matter. As with the hedge, I’m quite sure what our rights are, but it is never wrong to verify your rights before exercising them.

The Land Office decided not to get involved and could only email me the paperwork on the easement. So, I’ll be waiting on that to arrive.

Buildings and permits

In the Swedish countryside, where we live, you need to have a building permit to build a house. Then you can have sheds or a garage that, depending on size, do not have to be approved by the council. If you don’t need a permit, usually you have to inform the council that you are planning a new structure as a garage or larger shed. Additionally, you can build closer than 4,5 meters to the property line, but only if the neighbors approve of that. If the neighbors say nay, you cannot build that close, and any illegal buildings must be removed – or so is my impression of the local rules.

Even before the new house was built, the neighbors dragged in a large container-like building that met tiny-house standards. As you may recall, they also planned a garage. Just this garage has my interest, as I presume it will be built closer than the infamous 4 meters. So I called the council to hear if a permit for the garage, or any other permits, had been filed with them. It had not, and the council had only provided a permit for the house. Curious about the garage as I am, I mentioned a new building was in the planning, and it was closer than 4,5 meters from the property line, adding that I would not approve anything closer than that to our property.

As it turned out, the council had already been on the site and found sheds that had been built without a permit. So they informed the neighbors that the small toolshed they had built was ok due to size, but the tiny house was too large and did require approval. According to the councilman, they got fined for breaking the law and were forced to apply for the tiny-house permit after the fact. As these buildings were far away from our property, the council did not require them to inform us, which is fine with me. I have to say I’m positively impressed with our council for actively looking up offenders and penalizing them for breaking the law! But, back to my question, thus far, no permit for a garage has been filed with the council yet.

My reason for calling was also to enquire if the council could take action on the planned build before it was constructed. The councilman was very clear in that: they could not. Perhaps slightly naive as I am, I thought that the council could inform them that we were not gonna be ok with their planned build, and the neighbors could save money and trouble by moving it further away from the property line before building it. That is not how it works, according to the councilman; the building has to be built or a permit requested first. So we’ll wait for that to happen before informing the council about it. Meanwhile, electricity has been dug down to what will be the foundation for that shed.

When asked about the 4.5-meter limit, the councilman informed me that, indeed, such a building will have to be removed. It’s not like they get a fine and the shed can stay – no, it has to go. I’m looking forward to the neighbors all by themselves getting the insight and deciding to move the planned structure further away from the property line.

The mystery thickens…

When picking up the mail this morning, I found a mysterious cross had been painted in the middle of the easement road, exactly where our land ends. What’s that gonna be? No clue, but I suspect some kind of boom or pillar will be erected there, disallowing folks to use the road. Or perhaps a fancy light in the ground to indicate something… If it’s gonna be a boom, then it is not allowed. As concluded earlier, the neighbors do not own the road and they still cannot keep us from using it. In short, never a dull moment.

A week or so later, a hole had been dug in the place of the cross. Fifty centimeters square and rather deep, perhaps also fifty cm.

Then a friend of mine arrived to visit me in his 50ies 2CV car. He had not been there before and accidentally chose the easement road to get to us – something I first knew when he told me. Not ten minutes later, the neighbor’s car was once again parked at the beginning of the road to block it from access. Something they then kept up for weeks, exchanging the car for a motorcycle when the car was needed.

One day, there was nothing there. Or so it seemed, as a car visiting them entered the easement road with a loud racket. It turned out that a small stepladder had been placed in the hole, perhaps to block access to the road. But, it was sticking up more than the free space under the visitor’s car. I happened to be working in the garden when it happened, and they had to help out to free the car from the stepladder. Notably, that stepladder was removed from the hole that day and has not been used since – nor have the car or the bike been used to block the road.

Obviously, the neighbor still thinks he’s entitled to exclusive access to the road and tries everything to block us from using it. Which triggers the question: can he legally do that?

The lawyer:

Yes, again I contacted our lawyer to hear what our rights are. Simply said, the neighbors have the right to use the road, but no exclusive right to do so. The only thing to do about it is to enforce access and wait for them to make a move. Hopefully, they email us with the usual threats to not use the road because that’s when we get to call in our lawyer again and move for the second court case.

Next step will be to start using the road regularly when we’re back from our holidays and await the reaction it will trigger.

As usual, I’ll keep y’all posted…

Change of the building permit law:

Per the first of December 2025, the Swedish national law on building permits was heavily revised. The new version should allow for most buildings to be erected without informing the council or requiring a building permit. I was aware of this months before and in October asked the building department of our local council if they knew what was to be changed. In short, they knew very little. But what they did know was that the distance from a building to the border with the neighbors was not gonna change. Also, illegal buildings could still be challenged by the council.

The no-permit-required for building obviously does not apply to all buildings, but mainly to smaller buildings not used for permanent living. As the neighbors had not started building the shed yet, or the garage, I assumed that they were waiting for this new law to pass so they could save money on the permits required under the previous law. That made sense to me – why pay for something that you can get for free only months later?

Wait! Thought it was over this time? Not really…

Thought it was over now? As I did? Nope. Unfortunately, the story goes on and on. Continue reading here:
https://www.allegedfacts.eu/the-quirks-of-an-easement-part-3/

Editor’s comment:

As always, the above is an as-exact-as-I-can representation of the facts as we experienced them, and not fancied up in any way. It is not derived from any of my books, though the longer it goes on, the more I’m tempted to have it end up in one I will write in the future.

Paul
2025-08
Sweden

You can read the complete line of events here:
https://www.allegedfacts.eu/?s=easement