Who has to support the property?

Therefore, yes my question: How do I best document something like this in writing? Does it have to be done by a notary? Or do you write it yourself and sign it?

As said: It does not have to be notarized - that also costs extra money. If you want legal certainty, then there is probably no way around a professional (notary, lawyer).

Best regards

K1300S

From personal experience, I can advise you to talk to each other and, if you can agree, have it notarized. Especially with later costs resulting from maintenance or in the case of a legal successor, trouble could otherwise be programmed.

Whether the effort is really worth it for your neighbor or whether he is interested.... I'm curious about that.

I suspect the neighbor will only agree if he is out of the picture. He seems to have owned his house for a long time. Why should he put himself at a disadvantage if he hasn’t had any need to do so until now.

We also have a similar problem

Our property lies about 1.5 meters lower at one point. The existing old retaining wall was not pleasant to look at and it also did not seem very stable anymore. Our neighbor agreed that it could be demolished and rebuilt. He offered on his own initiative to contribute to it since he can then additionally fill up his property in this way. We are building a 2-meter high and 1-meter wide gabion wall together along nearly 12 meters. The costs will not be completely shared, as we are the “responsible parties” for this wall. We pay 2/3 of the costs. We already agreed on this at the time of purchase and had everything notarized. We also share an access road with three parties and maintenance as well as use (e.g., parked vehicles) must be regulated! Of course, we have to bear the costs alone for damages caused by our house construction.

I think (hope) that he won’t resist. He needs about 10m of retaining wall at the back to mound up his garden and then be able to use it – I need 10m of retaining wall at the front to be able to build my garage. Then there are still a few meters left that can also be built on, so that it becomes a continuous wall. If we split the costs 50:50, each will probably have to pay around €10,000.

If he doesn’t cooperate, he will never be able to use his door to the garden again – it currently floats about 0.5-1m in the air because his garden isn’t high enough. In addition, his garden is very uneven because he only mounded up one corner of the garden – without a retaining wall, he can’t do anything there anymore.

If he is not willing to talk at all, I will simply build the retaining wall on my property, as high as I need it (and as far as it is allowed) and he can figure out where he stands.