Q: My neighbor’s tree limbs hang over my property. Some of them are going to fall, can I cut them? - Charles in Rogersville, AL

A: The law is that an adjoining land owner has the right to remove over-hanging limbs and remove roots extending from a tree located on an adjoining lot so long as trespass is not committed.

The law has usually been “he who owns the land owns to the sky above it.” However, a tree that is “a boundary line tree” that is a tree where the trunk of a tree is located on the boundary line between two land owners so that the boundary line passes through the trunk or body of the tree above the surface of the soil is the common property of both land owners as tenants in common and neither may destroy the property of the other.

The answer depends on whether or not you and your neighbor own part of the tree as tenants in common. I don’t think you can kill the tree without liability so whatever you do to it must not be to the extent that the tree dies.

Certainly anything that you would like to do can be done with your neighbor’s permission and that may be the easiest way to solve this problem.

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