Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
Along Lily Bay Road, a Greenville street that hugs picturesque Moosehead Lake, there’s a narrow driveway tucked between two homes that’s littered with fencing materials and no parking signs.
The barriers, which also include concrete blocks and a cattle gate, are among the outward signs of a years-long legal battle between neighbors over a shared driveway that still hasn’t reached a resolution.
On one side are Carl and Denise Chretien, who own a second home on the road. The property includes a main driveway on one side of the house and a narrow second driveway on the other, which they occasionally use to access a rear entrance and maintain the property’s backyard.
Meanwhile, their neighbors to the north, Emily Patrick and Aaron Crossman, bought their home in 2020, two years after the Chretiens moved in. Patrick and Crossman’s home doesn’t have its own driveway, but it does have a deeded easement to use the shared driveway between the two properties to access a small parking area behind their house.
Previous owners of the neighboring homes created the easement, a legal allowance for someone to use land they don’t own for a specific purpose, in 1982. It gives the owner of Crossman and Patrick’s home the right to use a 24-foot-wide strip of land that runs 125 feet from the center line of Lily Bay Road, according to legal documents.
READ MORE ABOUT NEIGHBORLY DISPUTES
Disagreements over where the property line between the two homes lies, how much of the driveway Crossman and Patrick can use and how the shared driveway should be maintained started years ago. Those arguments have since escalated to the Chretiens blocking portions of the driveway to restrict Crossman and Patrick’s access to it.
The dispute is an example of the gamble homeowners can take when buying a property that includes an easement, especially if the neighboring properties get sold to new families who don’t see eye-to-eye. Those agreements about how to share property, even if penned decades prior, can become a point of contention when new neighbors disagree on the terms and ignite years of expensive litigation.
“Emotions can run pretty hot in many property disputes between neighbors,” said Chris Uphouse of Veridian Law, the Chretiens’ attorney. “Like any fight, this started with small disagreements that snowballed.”
The Chretiens declined to speak with the Bangor Daily News directly. Uphouse was previously a legal consultant for the BDN.
Throughout the dispute, Patrick has maintained that the shared driveway must remain clear so an ambulance can pull up to their home if their youngest child, who has a rare genetic kidney disorder and mild cerebral palsy, has a medical emergency.
The fight appears to have started when Crossman allegedly performed some work to improve drainage along the side of the communal driveway that abuts his house without receiving permission from the Chretiens first, according to Patrick and Uphouse.
On another occasion, Crossman trimmed trees that the Chretiens believed belonged to them, though it was later determined the trees sat on Crossman’s property, Uphouse said.
The Chretiens then began installing markers and barriers, such as metal chains, posts and a cattle fence, to identify where they believed the line between the two properties was and where Crossman and Patrick’s easement ended. The overall intention, Uphouse said, was to prevent their neighbors from parking their vehicles in the driveway and blocking the Chretiens’ access to a rear entrance and their backyard.
“The genesis of [the fight] is a difference of interpretation or understanding about where the right of way is in the driveway,” Uphouse said. “The core dispute is the neighbors believe the surface of the driveway itself, the length of it, is how far the right of way extends.”
The dispute came to a head when Crossman and Patrick arrived home from vacation in 2023 to find a 6-foot wall made of concrete blocks lining a portion of the driveway, cutting off their access to their home, Patrick said.
The family filed a lawsuit against their neighbors and a judge granted an injunction ordering the Chretiens to remove “all fencing including concrete fencing and barricade that is located within or in any way impedes access to the paved or gravel driveway” by May 19, 2024, according to court records obtained by the BDN.
The Chretiens eventually removed portions of the barriers and pushed them back, but never hauled everything away, according to Patrick.
Still, the legal battle between the neighbors continues, as both parties have accused the other of poor conduct, trespassing and harassment throughout the fight, according to documents from Piscataquis County Superior Court.
The Chretiens have accused Crossman of dismantling fence materials and throwing them into a retention pond behind the Chretiens’ home, as well as hitting the barriers with his vehicle, plowing snow against the fence, and allowing others to park in the driveway, blocking it.
Patrick said she and Crossman have both accidentally backed their vehicles into the barriers due to the space constraints they create. On one occasion, Patrick said Crossman damaged a taillight this way.
“These illegal barriers have caused a lot of damage to our personal vehicles, and that night Aaron did lose his temper and remove the gate and throw it in their pond,” she said.
In other cases, Patrick said the family has allowed friends to park in the driveway during gatherings, but this only happened when the Chretiens weren’t home.
“The gate and blocks create a natural barrier where snow piles up, and Aaron does his best to clear snow as close to it as possible because we need as much space to turn around as we can,” Patrick said.
The Chretiens have installed motion-activated cameras pointed at the area between the two homes, which Patrick believes is an invasion of privacy. Uphouse said the cameras are in place to capture any bad behavior from the Chretiens’ neighbors.
“Our house is like a prison for so many different reasons,” Patrick said.
Earlier this year, the court ruled that Crossman was in contempt of court because he “violated the preliminary injunction by repeatedly, blatantly and systematically impeding Defendants’ use of the right-of-way, and by harassing Defendants,” according to legal documents.
Today, a barrier the Chretiens made between the two properties, constructed primarily of concrete blocks, a cattle gate, planters and plastic poles used to mark driveways for snow removal, still exists.
This gives Crossman and Patick enough room for roughly one car to pass by the barriers at a time to park next to their home. Patrick worries it still isn’t enough space for larger vehicles, including ambulances and delivery trucks that drop off medication for her son monthly.
Crossman and Patrick also want more space so they can turn their vehicles around rather than back down the narrow driveway onto the busy road.
“It feels like we’re losing ground all the time,” Patrick said. “We just want to be able to back up safely.”
Patrick also argues the various iterations of the fence violate Maine’s spite fence law.
The Greenville code enforcement office also issued the Chretiens a violation notice informing them the barriers violate the town’s fence ordinance, according to documents provided to the BDN. The notice instructed the family to remove the concrete blocks and cattle fence, then apply for a fence permit, but Patrick said town officials are neglecting to enforce the violation.
Mike Roy, Greenville’s town manager, did not respond to a request for comment. Uphouse did not respond to a request for comment about the violation notice.
Mediation attempts have proven unsuccessful, both Uphouse and Patrick said.
Patrick said their attorney has withdrawn from the case and the family can’t afford a new lawyer, as they’ve already paid tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. These expenses also limit their ability to purchase a new home to escape the battle.
Earlier this month, Patrick said her family is leaning toward accepting a proposed settlement, the terms of which are confidential. If that happens, Patrick said she and Crossman will likely put their home on the market and pursue buying elsewhere, as the family can’t afford another home in Greenville that’s large enough to hold their five children.
If a settlement fails, the case will head to a jury trial, but that likely wouldn’t start until 2028, according to Uphouse.
“If we settle, I cannot bear to stay here next to these neighbors and we can’t afford to buy here in the hometown we love with the market being what it is,” Patrick said. “We are in purgatory at the moment, waiting to hear what is next.”