Vermont's Fence Viewer System: What It Does and What It Does Not Do
Vermont is one of the few states that still maintains a formal fence viewer system. Under 24 V.S.A. § 2241 and the sections that follow, each town's selectboard appoints one or more fence viewers to handle disputes between neighbors about division fences. A division fence is a fence that sits on or near a shared property line and separates two properties.
When neighbors disagree about who is responsible for maintaining a particular section of fence, or about the cost of repair, either party can request that the fence viewers inspect the fence and issue a determination. The fence viewers walk the line, assess the condition of the fence, and allocate responsibility for maintenance between the two owners.
This is a useful system for settling practical disputes about who pays for fence repair. What the fence viewer system cannot do is equally important: fence viewers have no authority to establish where the property line is. They are town officials, not licensed surveyors. Their determination about fence maintenance has no effect on the legal boundary between parcels.
Why the Property Line Question Must Be Answered First
Before you build any fence you intend to place on or near the boundary, you need to know where that boundary actually is. In Vermont, that answer comes from a licensed LLS, not from an assumption about where the line ought to be.
The practical risk is this: if you build a fence that encroaches on your neighbor's land, even by a foot or two, the fence is a trespass. Your neighbor is entitled to demand you remove it. Depending on how the conversation goes, you may face a legal dispute that costs far more in attorney fees and construction work than a survey would have cost at the start.
Vermont's metes-and-bounds system means that property lines rarely follow obvious visual cues. A line may run at an angle across a yard. It may jog around a corner that was set by an iron pipe now hidden under decades of soil. Without a survey, a homeowner has no reliable way to know where the legal boundary sits.
Stone Walls: A Particular Source of Confusion
Vermont's rural landscape is defined by stone walls, and they create a specific problem when it comes to fence placement. Many homeowners assume that an old stone wall marks the boundary between their property and their neighbor's. This assumption is sometimes correct, and sometimes wrong.
When colonial and 19th-century farmers first divided land in Vermont, they cleared fields by piling fieldstone along the edges of their lots. Those walls became early boundary monuments, and many Vermont deeds reference stone wall corners as the starting points and turning points of their descriptions. When a deed calls for a stone wall corner, the wall is the monument and it governs the boundary.
However, not every stone wall in Vermont was built on a boundary. Farmers also built walls to divide pastures within a single parcel, to contain livestock in specific fields, or simply to clear land for cultivation. A wall running through what is now a backyard may represent an interior farm division, not an exterior property line.
An LLS determines whether a particular stone wall is a boundary monument by examining the chain of deeds for both the subject property and the neighboring parcels, looking at historic maps and aerial photographs, and comparing the physical characteristics of the wall with the deed description. Without that analysis, building a fence along an old stone wall is a guess.
What Happens When There Is No Survey
The consequences of skipping a survey before fence construction vary, but none of them are good. Here are the most common scenarios:
- Fence on neighbor's land: The neighbor may demand removal at your expense. If you refuse, they may seek a court injunction requiring removal and may recover attorney fees.
- Fence inside your own line: You have effectively given up use of a strip of your property. Over many years, a fence in the wrong place can give rise to adverse possession claims if the neighbor treats the strip as their own.
- Fence dispute with fence viewers called: Fence viewers will attempt to resolve the maintenance question but will tell you they cannot determine where the line is. The underlying boundary question remains unresolved, and you are back to needing a survey.
- Title problems at sale: When you eventually sell the property, a title search may reveal the encroachment. The buyer's lender may require removal or a survey before closing.
When Vermont Law Requires a Survey (and When It Does Not)
Vermont does not have a law that requires a survey before building any fence. The fence viewer statute deals with maintenance disputes, not with pre-construction boundary verification. However, the practical reality is that building a fence within a few feet of where you think the boundary might be carries real legal and financial risk.
If your fence is clearly well inside your own property, a survey may not be necessary. A fence running down the middle of a large field, well away from any likely boundary location, probably does not require professional verification. The risk rises sharply when:
- The intended fence line runs close to what you believe is the boundary
- There is a stone wall, old fence, or other feature that could be interpreted as the boundary
- Your relationship with the neighboring property owner is uncertain or contentious
- The parcel has a complex metes-and-bounds description with multiple monuments
- The property has changed hands recently and the prior survey is old or missing
What a Boundary Survey for a Fence Line Involves
A Vermont LLS conducting a boundary survey for fence placement will research the chain of title and prior surveys for your parcel at the town clerk's office, examine neighboring deeds to understand how adjoining boundaries were originally established, search for and identify existing monuments in the field, and calculate the boundary location from the deed evidence and monument positions.
The surveyor then sets or references monuments at the corners that define the fence line and provides you with a plat showing the boundary. That plat gives you a defensible record of where the line was established, protecting you if a dispute arises later.
For a typical Vermont residential lot, this work costs approximately $800 to $1,500. Rural parcels with extensive stone wall research or difficult terrain may cost more. The survey cost is generally a fraction of what it would cost to remove and rebuild a misplaced fence, or to defend an encroachment claim.
Finding a Vermont Surveyor for Fence Line Work
The Vermont licensed land surveyor directory at findlandsurveyor.com lists LLS holders throughout the state. When you contact a surveyor, describe the location of your property, the approximate size of the lot, and the nature of the fence project. Surveyors who work regularly in your area will be familiar with local town land records and the types of monuments commonly used in your town's older surveys.
Getting a survey before you build is the straightforward path to a fence that stays where you put it, without legal complications.