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Rody,

I would start by picking up any of the dead limbs that fell into your yard and just start piling them up in the neighbors yard so they would have to actually move them before mowing the grass.

What you describe is neglegence. If so, your neighbor will be legally liable to any damage to your property (fences, out buildings, house, etc) Take pictures. Contact your local gov't code enforcement agency and let them mediate.

Years ago an elderly neighbor related her concerns about the possibility of a limb from a "heritage oak" on my property causing damages to her home. My giant oak was healthy & had been certified as such; therefore, her home owner's insurance would have had to pay for any Act of God damage to her property. (she was a nice lady, unfortunately she didn't outlive my heritage oak)

I would strongly suggest sending your neighbors a certified letter stating that, per your earlier conversation, you consider this tree to be a hazard due to its proximity to the power lines. Then, when and if something bad does happen, you will have a record of having informed them of it and they won't be able to say "we didn't know."

You say the county has told you it is the neighbor's problem. Did you contact the local electric company? They should care very much about the situation.

I would also recommend taking lots of pictures showing the proximity of the tree to the wires and that it is obviously dead.

Dead trees do sometimes stay vertical for a very long time, but it sounds like a tense situation for you. I understand your desire to not inflame the situation, but it doesn't sound like there is anything more you can do that won't have the potential to do so. So it becomes your responsibility to look after your own interests in the most reasonable way possible.

Have you considered bypassing the owner? If this tree endangers or compromises a power company's assets (poles & lines or service to customers), notifying the power company should prompt action to mitigate a potential hazard. As Commonsense suggested, as a CYA I'd take lots of pictures from various angles using a camera that embeds the date & time.

I own a tree service and by law whatever is on you property is part of you property including part of you neighbor's tree whit that being say you allow to cut whatever part of the tree is on your property and leave him whit the rest of the tree to fall on his property.

Pragmatically it is your problem. It only "becomes" your neighbor's problem when their homeowners insurance has to pay for your new roof.

Tell them that the work needs to be done - offer to split it 50/50 (not uncommon).

Sounds like it needs to be taken care of, so your realistic option is to pay for it yourself. Hire a tree service company to cut off all of the tree that is over your property, however they must leave the tree structually undamaged - as healthy as possible.

The sublties vary from state to state but for all it is on your property and you have the legal right to remove it.

How do we tell our neighbor politely that we don't have several thousand dollars to pay to have this huge old oak tree removed? Our Insurance Company will not pay to have it removed and they will not cover any "Act of God", so even if it gets blown over by a Hurricane, they won't cover it. However, they will have to pay for any damages it causes to our neighbor's property, and to remove it from our neighbor's property. Our Insurance Company would also have to pay for our defense costs if our neighbor sued us for his damages. We would suggest that our neighbor remove anything valuable from his garage that the tree is hanging over and feel free to cut any limbs or branches on the tree that are on his side of the property line. In fact, he has our permission to remove the whole tree at his expense, if he wants to.

Neighbor