How should I approach my neighbor about a tall dead pine tree that he won cut down?
I would ask him if you can pay for cutting the tree back to a safe level I don’t know if this is the best approach, because now he’s taking the responsibility of removing the impending damage to his own property. If, for example, he paid for someone to come and cut down a bunch of dead branches, and then a week later there’s a really bad storm that knocks the entire tree down and crushes his car, the neighbor can claim, “Well, he said he’d take care of it. Not my fault if he didn’t do a good job.” If you’re going to pay to trim it back, you might as well pay to remove the whole damned tree.
Step one is have an arborist come and look at it. Maybe you can split the cost with your neighbor as an indication of good will! There can be many factors that go into the decision of taking a dead tree down or leaving it, including proximity to houses, power lines etc, the state of the trunk (a non-rotting dead tree can be perfectly stable for decades), etc etc. Once the tree’s disposition is officially and professionally acquired, then you can move forward with solutions recommended by the arborist, which as a bonus may carry more weight with your neighbor than your reasonable but non-tree-professional concerns.
When I was house shopping last year I looked at a house with a huge stump out front. By pure coincidence, I ran into the neighbor who I used to work with. I immediately started digging for information about the previous owner and inside of the house. It turns out the previous owner had financial problems and eventually lost the house. However, before he lost it the dead tree out front fell on the neighbor’s house (my friend) and caused massive damage (I believe he said it was well over $10K and still climbing). It broke the water main under the sidewalk causing major flooding in his basement, damaged the porch and some other stuff I can’t remember. The tree had been dead with limbs falling every storm just like the poster’s situation, but the owner ignored his neighbor’s requests to have it cut down. In his financial situation, the previous owner obviously couldn’t pay for the damages and his home owner’s insurance was in default as well. My friend’s insurance covered most of it (minus
This is not legal advice. Here’s what I’d do: get a certified tree surgeon and/or tree removal service to come to the house and confirm for you, in writing that the tree is indeed dead and that it poses a risk. Get a copy of this and send it to the neighbor via a certified, registered letter with return receipt requested. Then see what happens. Some states require that the damaged property owner’s home insurance policy pay, especially if there is no evidence that the tree owner knew the tree was dead. If the neighbor does nothing and the tree causes damage to your property, you have evidence that he was warned and knew the tree was dead. He may also just choose to take care of the problem when he sees you’re serious.
