Neighbour relations: How to defend yourself in neighbour disputes?

What are the risks of exceeding the bounds of self-help (excess)?

If you fail to meet the conditions of self-help, you commit a so-called excess (impermissible self-help). In that case your conduct loses legal protection and the following follows:

1. Civil liability: The obligation to compensate the damage caused (§ 420 et seq. of the Slovak Civil Code).
2. Criminal liability: Depending on the circumstances, this may amount, for example, to the criminal offence of violating the inviolability of the home, or of unlawful interference with the right to a house, flat or non-residential premises.

2. Interim protection provided by the municipality

If the situation is not so acute that you must intervene immediately yourself, but at the same time you do not want to take the matter straight to court, an effective intermediate step is the protection provided by the municipality under § 5 of the Slovak Civil Code. The word "interim" here does not mean merely a temporary stage. Filing a petition with the municipality in no way prevents you from asking the court, in parallel or subsequently, for an interim measure (under § 324 et seq. of the Slovak Code of Civil Contentious Procedure) or from bringing a standard action. The municipality's decision is not binding on the court; however, if neither party to the dispute turns to the court, the municipality's decision becomes final.

The four conditions under which the municipality must provide you protection

The municipality may provide protection only where the following four conditions are met cumulatively (at the same time):

Note: The municipality does not examine who the true owner is!

In the proceedings, the municipality does not examine legal questions at all – it does not decide who holds title to the land, whether an easement exists, or whether the state of affairs is lawful. What the law protects here is the factual peaceful state itself, even if it were unlawful.

An example from practice: If you have long used a piece of land and one day your neighbour decides to build a fence in a way that cuts part of it off from you, the municipality will not examine the cadastral map or search for the true boundary. It will verify only that you had until then been using the land peacefully and that the neighbour interfered with that state in an evident way — and it will therefore order the neighbour to restore the previous state. The dispute over the land boundary itself belongs exclusively before a court.

How may the municipality decide?

The municipality's options are defined by law exhaustively (by a closed list). The municipality cannot invent other alternatives; it may only:

1. Provisionally prohibit the evident interference: For example, it prohibits the neighbour from continuing construction works being carried out in evident conflict with the approved building project and restricting you.
2. Impose an obligation to restore the previous state: For example, it orders the neighbour to remove an unlawfully placed fence or compost heap from the land boundary, if it was not there before and it disturbs peaceful use.

3. The last resort: Judicial protection

If you do not obtain redress through self-help or through the municipality's interim protection, judicial protection provided by the court comes into play. Under § 4 of the Slovak Civil Code, it is the court that is the primary organ of protection of a threatened or infringed right. In the field of neighbour relations, you can assert your rights through several types of action ("suing your neighbour"):

• An action against indirect nuisance emissions (§ 127(1) of the Slovak Civil Code): Used where the neighbour disturbs you not by the activity on their land as such, but by its results, which penetrate onto your land (e.g. odours, noise or intruding animals). The court can only order the neighbour to refrain from conduct that disturbs you beyond a level appropriate to the local circumstances or seriously endangers the exercise of your rights. It cannot, however, order the neighbour to perform a specific act (e.g. to move a structure).
• A rei vindicatio action for the surrender of a thing (§ 126(1) of the Slovak Civil Code): Used where the neighbour wrongfully withholds your property (e.g. durable fruits fallen onto their land, or animals that have strayed there) and refuses to hand it over. The prerequisites are a precise individualisation of the thing and proof that the neighbour has it in their factual control. If they withhold it in bad faith, they must surrender it together with its fruits and benefits.
• An action for the fencing of land (§ 127(2) of the Slovak Civil Code): The court may impose on the neighbour an obligation to fence their land, always examining whether the matter could not be resolved more economically by a negatory action, or by an action under § 417(2) of the Slovak Civil Code where serious harm is threatened.
• An action to allow entry onto land (§ 127(3) of the Slovak Civil Code): Where the neighbour voluntarily refuses to allow you entry onto their land needed for the maintenance and management of your property. In its judgment the court precisely defines the period, the extent of entry and the circle of authorised persons.
• An action to determine the course of a land boundary: This is a specific kind of declaratory ownership action under § 126 of the Slovak Civil Code, where the court's judgment is not constitutive but declaratory in nature (no new right arises). The relief sought is most often directed at moving a fence, vacating part of the land, or determining ownership of the disputed parcel.
• An action for the removal of an unauthorised structure (§ 135c of the Slovak Civil Code): A special regime for cases where an unauthorised structure is erected on another's land without the landowner's consent. The court has several alternatives for settling the relations – besides removal of the structure itself, it may award it to the landowner (against compensation) or establish an easement in favour of the owner of the structure.
• An action for protection against serious harm (§ 417(2) of the Slovak Civil Code): A preventive action to avert threatened damage (e.g. where the neighbour's trees pose a real threat to your house). The condition is the existence of a serious danger at the time of the court's decision, with the defendant already acting in this way or it being proven that they intend to do so – a merely theoretical possibility of future conduct is not enough.

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