Recently, my neigbor to the left as you would face the front of my house made a passing comment about fencing in their back yard.  I have already fenced in a good sized section of my back property.  My fence line is parallel to their property, but not up to my left property line due to the previous owners and where they decided to plant a series of arborvitae trees.  I could not have built my fence along my property line without wrecking a good chunk of my arborvitaes and probably killing them, or looking ridiculous, unless I built the fence about 4-5' into their property line for a 70-80' stretch to make the fence line even.

I would love to extend my fence line out the 10-12' (they are big arborvitaes) to the left which would intrude onto their property to contain these trees with their circumference, which would also allow them to attatch their proposed fence to mine and saving them a good chunk of money on this one relatively small portion section of land, roughly 10'x80" which is not really good for anything but rough forest growth,and of course my arborvitaes.

There is several thousand acres of forested land beyond our property borders in back, so we are hardly in a congested area and trying to conserve space.

So, how much trouble is this legally and possibly financially? My neighbors are very nice, and there is no animosity between us.  They mentioned the possibilty of a new fence which is the reason I brought this up and they hinted at connecting to my fence, which I was fine with other than the legalities if one of us had to sell our homes and then the surveyors come in and raise the problems for the prospective buyers and property boundaries.

So, what I think is that I pay for the fence move, the legal fees, and the property is mine.  They can then join their fence.

What I propose is I pay for the surveying, I pay for fhe moving of my fence to a point to satisfy us both by the survey

It sounds like your conversation needs to be with your neighbors.

The only logical solution is to declare war on the neighbors...after you defeat them in battle you can just take the land as spoils.

Well, you either need a good legal agreement, or a good chainsaw to cut down those trees....

Pay the money, get it surveyed and let the state/township decide who is right.

Pretty sure you cannot fence off their land for yourself.....Their Homeowners Ins. Company might have a problem with that

Chop down the trees and put the fence on the line.

Survey to establish line.  Record an easement for the fence, state that you all know the fence is not on the line and also a maintenance agreement on the fence.  All you need.

Talk to your neighbors. See if they will do a quit claim on the property so that it can be combined with yours.

Rather than a costly survey, see if your county recorder has a sidwell map of your area.