Who owns the fence on the property line?

The question your fence code does not answer

Start with the honest answer, because it is the one that saves the most time.

Read any fence ordinance in these five counties end to end and you will find rules about height by yard, distance from the line, sight triangles at corners, which face points at the neighbor, what the fence may be made of, whether a permit is needed, and whose duty it is to keep the thing in repair. You will not find a sentence deciding who owns a fence standing on a boundary. That is not an oversight. A zoning code regulates what may be built and where. Ownership is property law, and it sits somewhere else entirely.

Illinois does have a statute on the subject. The Illinois Fence Act is at 765 ILCS 130 (opens in a new tab), and it governs division fences between adjoining owners and livestock fencing. It is state law rather than a village rule, and it does not set residential fence heights or permit requirements. That is the limit of what we are going to say about it. A fence contractor's website telling you what a statute entitles you to in a disagreement with your neighbor would be doing you a disservice, and this one is not going to.

So this page is about the part that is settled and published: what your municipality has actually decided about a fence near a line, and what it puts on you before it will issue anything.

Finding the line is your job, and several codes say so in writing

Several codes here answer the boundary question in exactly one respect, and the answer is the same everywhere it appears. Knowing where your line runs is your responsibility, not the village's.

• Hennepin says it outright. Article 3 of the Village of Hennepin Zoning Ordinance opens at 3.1(A) with the statement that it is the responsibility of the property owner to locate all property lines, and directs owners to check the property survey. The village's own permit application carries the same thing as a declaration the owner signs, acknowledging that they have been informed it is solely their responsibility to determine the exact location of their property lines.
• Paw Paw allows the line and disclaims it in the same breath. A fence may run right up to the property line there, and the village says in terms that it takes no responsibility for where that line actually is.
• Mendota attaches a cost to not knowing. Its zoning ordinance at 340-8(8) allows a fence on the lot line with the decorative surface facing outward, and continues: if the lot line cannot be determined, the owner must pay for a survey.
• Toluca makes it a condition of the permit. Under 9-4-6(A), before a permit can be issued it is the responsibility of the property owner constructing the fence to provide the Zoning Board with proof of the location of the property lines the fence will be bordering. That is the most demanding pre-permit condition found anywhere in this research, and in practice it means evidence of the boundary rather than a sketch.

The point underneath all four is worth stating plainly, because homeowners assume the opposite: a permit is not a determination of your boundary. Nobody at the counter is certifying where your line is when they stamp your application. Some offices will look. Hennepin's zoning enforcement officer checks construction stakes before a fence is erected, which is a real check and is still not a survey. The line stays yours to establish, and it stays yours if it turns out to be wrong.

What counts as proof of where the line runs

What an office will accept as evidence of the line varies more than almost anything else in this subject, and it is the single most common cause of a delay. It runs, roughly, from a drawing to a dated professional survey:

• Visible pins, or a surveyAmboy at 18-42 requires every building permit applicant to supply a survey showing the lot lines, unless survey pins are already clearly visible on the ground when the inspector looks.
• Monuments sighted by an inspector, or a licensed surveyStreator's Fence Permit Application states that property lines must be proven by one of two means: a survey conducted by a surveyor licensed by the State of Illinois, or the sighting by a City Inspector of true property line monuments or stakes placed by a licensed surveyor.
• An actual survey, plus staking before work startsThe City of LaSalle at 153.120(C) requires all plan dimensions relating to the location and size of the lot to be based on an actual survey, and the lot to be staked out on the ground before construction is started.
• Stakes if they can be found, a certified plat if they cannotHennepin's permit requirements state that if property stakes cannot be identified by the applicant or located by village staff, a certified plat of survey must be submitted.
• A survey with an expiry dateLadd at 17.58.20(C) requires, for a fence built on the boundary, a survey establishing the boundary line performed by a licensed Illinois land surveyor within the last six months. An older plat in a drawer does not satisfy it.
• A free county print, accepted in place of a paid surveyMendota accepts a LaSalle County GIS lot survey printout (opens in a new tab), which is the least burdensome documentation requirement found anywhere in this set.

Two things follow. The first is that the answer for your town is worth getting before you agree a start date, because a survey is the item most likely to add weeks and it is entirely outside a contractor's control. The second is that a survey with a shelf life is a genuinely different requirement from a survey, and if you are in a town that sets one, an old plat you already own may be worth nothing to the office.

The division fence agreement, and what one code says it must contain

Here is the mechanism that several codes in this area use, and it is the closest any of them comes to touching ownership.

The shape repeats. The code sets an offset, so a fence has to sit some distance inside the owner's line. Then it provides exactly one route onto the boundary itself: a division fence, defined as a fence line directly on a property boundary line, permitted only where the two owners have a written agreement.

What differs, and it differs a great deal, is the burden the agreement carries.

Oglesby has the most demanding version, and it is worth setting out in full because it shows what these agreements are really being asked to do. Section 14-6-12(A) requires a fence and all of its posts, bases and other structural parts to sit completely within the lot and not within eighteen inches of any property line, unless it is a division fence. A division fence may be erected only if the building inspector is provided a copy of a written agreement recorded in the office of the LaSalle County Recorder of Deeds (opens in a new tab), containing all five of the following:

• A legal description of the property in which the division fence will lie.
• A statement of ownership or co-ownership of the fence, a statement of the duty to maintain it, and the right to enter the other's premises for maintenance if necessary.
• A statement of each party's remedies for the other's breach of the duty to maintain.
• A statement of the duration of the agreement, and the procedure for removing the fence when it expires.
• A statement that the agreement binds heirs, beneficiaries, assigns and any other successors in title or interest in the land.

That last item is the one that changes what kind of document this is. An agreement binding successors in title is not a note between two neighbors. It runs with the land, which is exactly why the code sends it to the Recorder of Deeds rather than to the village. It also means the ownership question the code otherwise stays silent on gets answered by the document itself, in whatever words the two owners put in it.

Ladd's version is nearly the same list, from the same model code, recorded at the Bureau County Recorder of Deeds (opens in a new tab) instead, with the default setback set further back and a currency requirement on the survey. Hennepin's is a genuinely lighter burden of a different kind: outside its agricultural district, a fence must stand at least twelve inches inside the lot line unless a written agreement signed by the adjacent owner of record is filed with the village clerk. A signature at the clerk's office binds the two people who signed it. A recorded instrument binds whoever owns the two lots next. Those are not the same undertaking, and which one you are under decides how much work this is going to be.

One honest note about Ladd, because the ordinance does not resolve it. Its 17.58.20(B) permits a division fence directly on the boundary with the recorded paperwork, while 17.58.30(A) says fences including all posts and bases must be located completely within the boundaries of the lot. The sensible reading is that the second is the general rule and the division fence provision is the exception to it, but the ordinance never says so, and we are flagging that rather than resolving it for you.

And the sentence that has to go here: a recorded agreement is a property document, and drafting one is the point at which this stops being a fence question. Have somebody qualified look at it.

Who has to keep it in repair, which the codes do answer

Ownership is unanswered. Upkeep is not, and the codes here are unusually consistent about it.

Several make the duty run to the owner and the occupant, which is worth reading twice if you rent out the property or rent it. Spring Valley's 14-6-12(D)(6) puts maintenance on the owner or occupant and names loose and rotting materials specifically. Hennepin's 3.1(L) requires the owner and/or occupant of a property where a fence is erected to maintain the fence in good repair at all times. Oglesby uses the same owner and/or occupant formula, so a tenant can be on the hook alongside a landlord.

Granville is the unusual one. There, the property owner is made responsible for maintaining both sides of the fence, which reaches the face pointing at the neighbor.

Paw Paw's 149-5 has no numbers in it at all and is a duty nonetheless: all fences shall be kept in good repair and shall allow sight visibility at the street and at all intersections. Disrepair is itself a violation there, whether or not fixing it needs its own permit.

The enforcement end is consistent too. Ladd at 17.58.40, Lacon at 153.092(H)(4)(e) and Oglesby at 14-6-12(D)(6) all empower the local officer to order a fence repaired, replaced or removed when it falls below the standard. And where a division fence agreement is required, the agreement itself has to allocate the maintenance duty and state a remedy for breach, which is the code effectively insisting that the two owners settle it in advance rather than argue about it later.

Where to take the part this page cannot answer

Four places, and the split between them is the important part.

• Your village or county zoning officePlacement, height, whether a permit is needed, what proof of the line they accept, whether a division fence is recognised there and what the agreement has to contain. Everything on this page came from documents these offices publish.
• A licensed Illinois land surveyor (opens in a new tab)Where the line actually is. Several of the codes above will accept nothing else, and no amount of reading settles it.
• Your county Recorder of DeedsWhere a division fence agreement gets recorded, and where an existing one would be found if a previous owner made one.
• An attorneyOwnership, an existing agreement, anything about rights, and anything at all where you and your neighbor disagree. We build fences. What your position is in a dispute is not ours to tell you, and a page that tried would be worth less than this one.

There is one piece of advice on this subject that is not legal advice and is worth more than most of what is: talk to your neighbor first. Before the survey, before the office, before anything is ordered. Every route described on this page is easier if that conversation has already happened, and a division fence agreement is impossible without it. It is the one step no code requires and every code quietly assumes.

Once the line and the paperwork are settled, the rest is the ordinary business of height, setback and which face points out, and of whether a permit is needed at all. What each of the towns we serve publishes is on that town's own page. The approval stays in your name throughout: we build, we do not pull permits, and we will not tell you we did.

Related questions

Xcel Outdoor Living builds fences and decks across Bureau, LaSalle, Putnam, Marshall, and Lee counties, Illinois. Call 815-579-2323 to walk your fence line.