Couple forced to sell family home in legal row over fence
A DAD jailed in a neighbours’ fence dispute has been told to sell his family home to pay £475,000 court bills.
Mark Coates and his wife Louise fought for years with Janice Turner and Brian Greenwood after moving to a countryside semi in 2015.
Rows over the site of a fence and ownership of a track became a “bitter, aggressive” dispute, a court heard.
Each couple said the other had surveillance cameras while Mr Coates, a carer for his disabled son, was found to have sworn and thrown stones at his neighbours’ bedroom window.
Both pairs were warned when they first reached court in 2020 that the row could end in financial ruin and Mr Coates, 56, spent nearly seven weeks in jail for contempt of court.
Now he and his wife, 52, face having to sell up after Mr Greenwood, 69, and Mrs Turner, 65, asked for a court order so the bills can be paid.
High Court judge Master James Brightwell ruled a forced sale of the property, thought to be worth about £420,000, was the only way that the legal debts would be paid. Mr Coates said he doubted it would fetch that, adding: “I don’t know who would want to live next to them anyway.”
The couples, of Robertsbridge, East Sussex, began rowing over their boundary and Mrs Turner claimed a brick wall encroached on her land.
In October 2020 High Court judge Mr Justice Morgan said continuing the row could result in financial ruin.
Calling it a “very bitter, aggressive, violent dispute,” he added: “It is not unknown for cases of this kind to result in the bankruptcy of one or both sides. That is why boundary dispute litigation is often said to be very very unfortunate.”
Fighting
But the case continued – in 2022 Hastings County Court found against the Coateses and in 2023 Mr Coates was accused of breaching an injunction meant to defuse the row. He was jailed for 252 days, later cut to 47.
Mr Coates told Master Brightwell: “We are not going to stop fighting this matter, even if it’s eight or 10 years. We are representing ourselves because we haven’t got any money.” He later said he will be “homeless”.
Their neighbours’ barrister Clare Anslow said the Coateses were “the authors of their own misfortune”.