If anyone can give us their opinion, I'd really appreciate it. Sorry - it's a long story.
We have recently demolished our home to build a new one. Demolition happened 3 months ago.
We left one wall of our carport, as a "feature" around the courtyard in our new home. (weird, I know, but we had a plan).
Anyway, unbeknownst to us, our neighbour on that side (very elevated above us) had built a garden/lawn area, up against this carport wall. With the removal of our house, the pressure of his garden has caused the wall to collapse, and his garden is cascading down onto our property.
There is a limestone retaining wall between our properties which is still OK. It is the elevated area above this that has pushed the wall over, as he did not retain that area. He just used our wall, which was free-standing, built on the inside of the retaining wall.
So - council won't get involved as it is a "civil" matter. Their advice is that we are responsible for our wall that fell down, he is responsible for retaining his garden to stop it sliding down onto our property.
His insurance company have said that it is totally our fault, and that we have to pay for our side as well as retaining their garden.
We don't have an insurance company, as there is no house,contents or anything on our block to insure....... I think we might need a lawyer?
Please advise - this has me really stressed. I'm really hoping not to fall out with the neighbours, but we can't afford to fix their garden as well? I just cant see how it can be our fault if they built an unretained garden against our carport.