Striking justice

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Some time ago, friends brought their French architect and his wife over for lunch and the conversation turned to how each group, British and French, saw itself and how it thought it was seen by the other group. There were a few surprises for each party, here, but I don't think that attitudes were altered.

One of the points that the architect made was that the French, when roused to indignation, took to  the streets, conjuring up images in my irreverent mind of the Bastille being stormed by angry bus drivers led by a bare breasted woman waving a flag, while the British were seen as agreeing everything behind closed doors....oh for the days of beer and sandwiches at No, 10.

Well, like all stereotypes, it is useful for labelling a phenomenon without having to examine it. There are all sorts of assumptions lurking beneath....that the French are open about their disagreements, while the subtle British hide them under the carpets....that the French system allows and encourages public expression while its' British counterpart stifles discord....and the assumptions are as interesting as the construction of the stereotype.

A little reflection shows that the British do indeed march in the streets, mostly on matters of principle. Animal welfare, war, taxation...these bring people onto the streets  risking stand offs with the police, even though these days the politicians have tried to limit demonstrations too close to their cosy lair in Westminster.
They might be wise.....down the ages, foreign ambassadors have remarked on the propensity for violence of the English and I don't think much has changed.
One more General Election returning the same caste of boobies to power and I think that Chesterton's people might just stir from their beer. If they haven't all already emigrated.

When the French march, it is not usually a mass movement, but something organised by a group of unions with the inevitable students tagging along, the police being present to prevent kids from the immigrant suburbs doing likewise and attacking the expensive shops along the way. These kids, not being fully integrated into a society that rejects them, don't understand the nature of a demonstration or a march in France. It is not about smashing a rotten society...it is demanding a better place for oneself within that society.
1968 is a long way in the past.

The latest demonstration takes place in Paris today. A wonderful gallimaufry of prison officers, probation officers, lawyers and judges protesting at the state of justice in France - as well they might.
The prison officers and probation officers are unhappy about the proposed closure of local prisons in favour of huge institutions which might well be run by private enterprise.
Judges are fed up with having to buy their own copies of the Codes - the basis of law in France - as the budget screws tighten yet further.
Lawyers are fed up with the reductions in legal aid.

Less parochially, some lawyers and judges are against the suppression of the post of the - relatively - independent investigating magistrate in favour of an enhanced role for government lawyers in deciding whether to bring prosecutions.  here.
Defence lawyers want reforms in the practice of police custody, to allow those detained the real assistance of their lawyers which is demanded by the European Convention of Human Rights and denied by most French jurisdictions. here
There are even a few calling for the entire scrapping of the basis of the French legal system and the adoption of the 'Anglo - Saxon' model. No, not Alfred handing down justice while burning the cakes, but the sort of thing we recognise in Common Law countries....where the defence has a fair crack at the prosecution case.
They can kiss goodbye to that even before they get their shoes dirty.

What will be the outcome of this march? To show that you are allowed to demonstrate in the streets of Paris. Nothing more, and that's a pity.
Particularly at this juncture when Sarkozy is intent on making a new establishment in his own image and on eliminating the little independence there is in the French legal system to enable him to do so.

Asking French friends, they are united in their despair at their system of justice, feeling that most of it is a charade.
The well connected stay well protected, so much so that the arrest of a couple of notaires in the south of France for widescale property fraud was regarded as unbelievable.
Whose toes had they trodden on?

Personally, I always thought that property fraud was what  some notaires aspired to, though I probably misjudge them, mistaking incompetence for intent.

In the days when I had holiday cottages, I was looking for a place to convert, and saw a likely prospect in a notaire's window.
I made an appointment to view, and met the notaire's nark at the property. It was super...big gardens back and front and not overlooked by anyone - a miracle in a French hamlet.
Then the nark said that the house at right angles to it was also for sale - was I interested?

No, I wasn't. I  knew that house. A friend and her sister had rented it at one point and while it was a nice house, it only had a courtyard and to get to it you had to use a right of way past the house of a complete nutter whose walls were festooned with 'No Parking' signs and whose car was usually parked in the right of way.

Further, I only wanted one house.

I made an offer on the house I wanted, and sat back to wait.
After two weeks, I telephoned the nark.
No, the sellers weren't interested.
O.K., I'll go up by two thousand.
No point. They won't accept.

After thinking  a while, I telephoned the friend who had lived in the second house.
Yes, she knew the owners. They lived on the other side of the hamlet. A nice couple. She would ring them.
She did, and we all got together in my friend's house over coffee and cake.
Wasn't my offer enough?
What offer?

As we continued, aperitifs replaced the coffee. This was serious.
The notaire's nark had not, at any point, relayed my offer to the sellers. On the contrary, having originally estimated the house himself, he had just told them that they were asking too much and should reduce their price. They were confused and starting to be annoyed. I was annoyed and puzzled. My friend had the answer.
I'll ring the owner of the second house.

She came round to join in the aperitifs. All was revealed.
She had been told by the notaire that he had a buyer for her house, but only if it could be sold with the one at right angles - the one I wanted - in order to be able to create a new exit to the road through the back garden to avoid the nutter next door.

My sellers protested loudly...they were to be shafted to make a favourable sale for her.
Oh no....the notaire had told her that they were on board, glad to be rid of the house.

A moment of quiet broken only by the clink of bottle on glass, and my friend said
Well, what are we to do? He's lied to both of you, and while - turning to her ex landlady -, I really sympathise with you, it's not fair to you - turning to the sellers of house one.
I made it clear that I did not want both houses, nor did I want to grant a right of way for a car over the garden.

The landlady came up with the estimation for the sale of both houses which made it clear that, with the new price proposed to the sellers of house one, they were indeed being royally shafted.
Would she make an adjustment with the sellers of house one to let the project proceed more equitably?
No.

I offered to buy house one at the price I had originally proposed. The sellers accepted. The landlady left to ring the notaire.

His first reaction, caught out in sharp practice, was to attack. He tried to browbeat the sellers.
Their house was for sale with him...they were not allowed to make a deal without his involvement.
He might have got away with it if he had not telephoned five times in increasing states of fury, which prompted the sellers to check the mandate and to see that he had not been granted exclusivity.

Then he turned to me.
I had been introduced to the house by his nark, therefore I must pay him commission.
Well, under normal circumstances, I would have paid commission, but these were not normal circumstances. He had tried to shaft the sellers and he had not transmitted my offer.
He could boil his head.
He would take me to court.
Fine.

When we all went to sign the compromis with another notaire, he had clearly heard of the ruckus
Maitre Plouc will have your guts. He wants his commission.
He can want. Are you going to do this compromis or not?
He was. Fees were involved.

Maitre Plouc carried on telephoning me, but was careful not to write any letters.
I asked friends what to do and they told me to complain to the departmental office of the Order of Notaires.
I did that.
Some weeks later I had a letter from the secretary of the Order, stating that my complaint was without foundation.
Signed .....Maitre Plouc...secretary.

He didn't take me to court, as it happened, but I was banned from his office.

Which saved me from the fate of an American couple who bought a house and land through him, only to discover that they had paid for two fields which did not belong to them.

Now, is this just another little misunderstanding by a foreigner in France?
Maitre Plouc was, after all, only trying to do a deal on behalf of a client.
Yes, indeed, and neatly shafting another client in the process.
The only control on his activities?
Other notaires, who, like the Barons of Runnymede, would understand.

I can't claim that things differ too much in the U.K. in this respect ...... experience with the Solicitors' Complaints Bureau of the Law Society and their equivalent wielders of the whitewash brush at the Financial Services Authority don't exactly leave you abounding in confidence, but at least the person you're complaining about doesn't sign the letter refusing to hear your complaint!

When you are inside a system, you become accustomed to its' little ways and things pass you by. You grumble about the inadequacies of the provision for the task you are to perform, not the task itself.
As an outsider to the French justice system, I read the blog of Maitre Eolas here with great interest - and not only on Six Nations weekends.
He is an insider, the man with the white hat with his own hobby horses to ride, but close reading of the posts and the comments thereon give an illuminating picture of how the general system works.

Overworked magistrates trying to do their best, other magistrates more intent on currying favour for promotion than anything else, the prosecution trying to micro manage cases while being micro managed in their turn by the Chancellery with its' eye ever on the media. Expulsion cases being initially reviewed for rejection by law interns, proposals to bring more and more cases under the sole jurisdiction of the prosecutor...it is not a pretty picture.

Over that lunch with friends I had asked the architect how he thought foreigners categorised  the French justice system.
Brutal and incompetent, he replied.

We were all taken aback. For once, foreigners and natives shared the same vision.

The curious incident of the notaire.....

Image by Gnaphron via Flickr

Buying property in France, you are obliged to use the services of a notaire. It's for your own good, you are told...he is a sort of watchdog...nothing gets by him.

Now, in England, I have never used a solicitor when purchasing property....long experience of the breed in other modes of legal practice convinced me that there was no way I would trust any of them with my money, my malt or my maidservant given their propensity to idleness, incompetence and inefficiency - all in slow motion, save for the demands for payment which drop on the doormat with alarming regularity.

Thus, when buying property I would do my own searches and ask my own questions, fill out the Land Registry forms and that was that...cheap, fast and accurate.

Then I moved to France, that country of liberty, equality and fraternity, where the fraternity of notaires, profiting from the lack of equality which gives them the monopoly in property transactions, take liberties with their clients' rights.

Before anyone jumps on me to tell me that their notaire is wonderful, has saved them heartache and money, let me now say that either you have come across a phenomenon of nature or you don't have much French.
There have to be good notaires....I did know one once, in fact, the man who undertook my first purchase in France. He was a phenomenon of nature and I didn't have much French, let alone any understanding of French property law.

Totally plastered at the post lunch rendez-vous, he fixed the estate agent with a well oiled eye and asked how he, the estate agent, could possibly imagine that he, the notaire, could proceed with a legal transaction when the person laying down money, me, didn't understand the proceedings.

The estate agent replied that he would translate. The notaire said that that wouldn't do. He, the estate agent, had an interest in the transaction, to wit, his commission. An interlude of argey bargey then took place, in which it was clear that the estate agent would lose, since the notaire had the obstinacy of all persons in the legal profession multiplied by the effects of having drink - in quantity - taken at lunch.

The seller made the mistake of intervening to suggest calling his nephew, who taught English at the lycee. Both men turned on him to ask how that helped as the nephew might have English, but also had an interest...the family connection with the seller. He retired to his corner, in need of the towel and bucket, while the two main combatants got on with the tussle.

The estate agent said that we were all assembled and surely we could get on with things. Suppose we put a clause in the act that he had done the translation and took responsibility?

No. He didn't have the right to take responsibility.

Did we have to have an official translator?
No. Just someone competent.

But I am competent. Ask the client. She understands my English.
Doesn't matter whether she does or not. You have an interest and are barred.


This was going to last a long time...the notaire was coming out of the euphoric post lunch stage and going into grumpy mode. He turned to me and explained in clear and accurate English the nature of the problem.

I risked an intervention.

As his English was so good, could he not explain to me as we went along?
Yes - in English - he could.

Would that do?
Yes - in English - it would, if I was agreeable.

We had a wonderful afternoon. He read the acte de vente in French, as he is obliged to do, gave me a copy to read and told me what it was about in English, together with various commentaries on the family history and circumstances of the seller, who, happily ignorant of the calumny, nodded and smiled as his name was pronounced. The estage agent, fascinated, had to have several of these details explained to him in depth - in English - and the sale process was finally completed as the dusk of a winter evening set in.

Unfortunately, this notaire was on the verge of retirement and his practice was taken over by the big firm in the nearby market town, so I lost this phenomenon of nature. It was to be some years before I had any further contact with the breed and it has been downhill all the way.

As I say, they have a monopoly of property transactions and despite what anyone tells you, they are not there to protect your interests. They are there to ensure that the state has you marked down for the future as the owner of a taxable asset - thus the obligation to use their services.

Not, mark you, that all the English know this. Or they do know this and have made improvements to the system. There is a growing market of English selling among themselves and avoiding the notaire altogether which at some point will come to the attention of the authorities. Mr. Sykes will sell to Mr. Dombey in pounds sterling and will move out. Mr. Dombey will move in. The tax authorities send the bills for the taxe d'habitation and fonciere to Mr. Sykes, who tells Mr.Dombey, who pays them. What happens when Mr. Dombey sells in his turn to Mr. Smartalek will be interesting, as at some point Mr. Smartalek will get his tax bill from Mr. Sykes via Mr. Dombey and will decide not to pay it. Mr. Sykes won't have a bank account in France any more so the taxman can't seize it or freeze it, so what happens then?

Take Mr. Sykes to court for non payment and enforce the judgement in the U.K.? What if Mr. Sykes has emigrated beyond the jurisdiction, or has just gone to ground? Send the bailiffs round to Mr. Smartalek to seize his television? Or make a forced sale of his house?
Doubtless it will all end in tears, but Mr. Sykes is happy.


No, I wouldn't touch such a business with a bargepole and neither would you, but there are people who do....and are doing. Not far from me.

Now, a notaire is supposed to protect you from all this sort of thing and you will be told that all notaires are insured, so that if they are negligent, you, the client, will be reimbursed. In your dreams. Just try finding a lawyer to represent you against a notaire.

There is a case going on at the moment brought by a couple of old ladies who sold their house at well under its actual value on the advice of an estate agency. They have sued the estate agency, who won, roughly on the grounds that they told the ladies that the house would sell at that price!


Now, when you buy a house in France, part of the acte de vente deals with sales at an undervalue - thus dealing with the under the table in cash proceedings - and part of the fee you will be charged is to contribute to the operation of the notaires' database, which enables them to contest unreasonable enquiries as to value on the part of the taxman, so you would think that the notaire might just notice a drastic undervalue, wouldn't you?
No, of course not. He is a notaire.


The old ladies then started suing the buyers, on the grounds that they haven't been paid. You might think that a notaire might just notice the absence of folding stuff, mightn't you.
No....he didn't. He is a notaire.


In the meantime, the old ladies are paying the taxe d'habitation on the property now occupied by the buyers as the appropriate tax authorities noted that the ownership was in dispute and went for the bird in the hand.


The old ladies have just lost in the regional court of appeal.


You will note two things from this cautionary tale.

The notaire, the watchdog, let the whole shemozzle go through without a bleat, let alone a growl.

Nobody is suing the notaire.

The knock on the door

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Imagine you are renting a house in France and a man comes banging aggressively on your door one morning. What would you do? Call the gendarmes? All right, stop laughing...really, what would you do?

A couple renting a house for the summer had just this experience and found themselves opening the door to a bum bailiff who announced that he had come to value the contents of the house to satisfy an unpaid debt! They explained that they were not the owners, but this did not satisfy him and he shouted and bawled a great deal before announcing that if they did not let him in he would return with the gendarmes...you see, they are available sometimes, to the right people.

They telephoned the owner, who is living abroad, who duly contacted his keyholder, only to discover that his keyholder had passed on her duties to someone else...a private arrangement...and had been somewhat selective in forwarding the post, so that the debt at the origin of the morning call - a case lost in court - had not been notified to him. He telephoned the bum bailiff's HQ straightaway, and the whole matter was settled, at least as far as his tenants were concerned.

I know the owner....I have been living here a long time....and I can imagine that this must have been the last straw in an affair going back a very long time.

Years ago, he had bought a run down cottage, this being the era when the French thought it hilarious that foreigners would buy these heaps of stones at the exorbitant prices they were demanding. When the heaps of stones turned into little gems, they were laughing on the other side of their faces, but this is by the by. Run down this cottage might have been, but it had water, electricity and mains drainage, all these noted in the acte de vente - the deeds.
He made a nice job of it and let it as a holiday cottage until the Saturday mucking out run became too much for him....as he explained, people fell into categories - the very nice who polished the furniture, the very nice who didn't, the nice ordinary holidaymaker, the odd professional complainer and the total filthpacket. When the last category started to become more than a rare occurrence, he stopped letting. It was just too much strain, running round in the short time between the late departure and the next arrivals trying to find parts to mend the loo or replacing shower fittings that had been wrenched from the wall, let alone the time that he went to change the beds only to find a naked female occupant still ensconced.

He put the cottage up for sale and found a buyer. The acte de vente was duly signed and money changed hands. However, this was not the end of the story. Months after the purchase the buyer called him and asked him where the drains ran, so he went over and showed the guy the run of drains and the manhole cover in the road, just as the guy who sold him the place had done. Some weeks later, he received a letter from his buyer's lawyer, claiming that he had deliberately sold his buyer a pup, in that the cottage was not on the mains, the manhole cover being an access to the storm drains which led directly to the river!

On enquiry at the local mairie, it appeared that half the village was on this inventive version of mains drainage, but that was no comfort to him. How did he stand legally? He went to an avocat with both actes de vente and the letter he had received from the buyer's lawyer and his avocat found an interesting feature. When he bought the cottage, the vendor had stated that it was on the mains. When he sold it, the notaire had changed the wording of the clause with the effect that he, as vendor, took full responsibility for the existence of mains drainage. He had not thought anything about it as it was read over to him, because he genuinely thought it was on the mains and, anyway, the original owner had vouched for it in the first place. He asked his avocat for advice and got the usual legal humming and haaing.

'Well, let's see what they want and then we'll think about it.'

His avocat wrote to the buyer's avocat and, a year later, having received no reply, sent the papers back with a suggestion to get back in touch if the question ever surfaced again.


Well, it didn't surface for three years.

He was at home, having returned from foreign climes, when there was a knock at the door. It was a bailiff, who informed him that he had been taken to court by his purchaser and, in his absence and unrepresented, had been found liable for the cost of installing a septic tank to deal with the sanitation problem at the cottage. One always has to be thankful to the late Frankie Howerd in these circumstances, as nothing better sums up the situation as to say that his flabber had never been so ghasted. Further perusal of of the proffered document revealed that all this had happened three years' earlier.....just after his own lawyer had given up on hearing from the opposition. He had not been in France at the time, but a neighbour had been collecting and passing on his post and there had been absolutely nothing, either from his purchaser's lawyer or from the court in relation to this case. In the meantime, he had been back in France for over eighteen months and this was the first he knew of any problem.

Telling the bailiff what he could do with himself, he contacted his lawyer to ask firstly how was it that he could be taken to court without receiving a summons and secondly, to tell him to appeal the judgement. There was no answer to the first request, but a demand for 660 euros to deal with the second. He paid it and left his lawyer to get on with it while he went off to visit the family, being sure to give his e mail address to avoid difficulties with the post. Eventually, his lawyer e mailed him to say that since the case was three years' old, the possibility of appeal was time barred. Surprised that this advice had cost him 660 euros when one would think that an experienced lawyer would have some idea of how long it can be before an appeal is barred, he replied, asking his lawyer to investigate the possibility of overturning the judgement on procedural grounds. He was still awaiting a reply to this request several months later when the bombshell of the second knock on the door hit him. He paid up, to avoid disturbance to his tenants, but he can't have been happy.

Several things come to mind.

First, why didn't the buyer, once he was aware of the problem, get in touch and try to sort it out face to face? If that hadn't worked, then by all means go to law, but it seems needlessly aggressive to me.

Then, where was this 'security of purchase' so often touted by notaires? In all their publicity, they tell you that when you buy, they cover all the problems and have an insurance scheme to pay compensation if any hitch should occur. Well, in this case, it was the same local notaire who covered both sales, so you would think that some compensation was due, wouldn't you? If you would, then you haven't lived in France very long. According to the second 'acte de vente' the client took full responsibility....that lets out the notaire who drew up the document.
More interestingly, why had the notaire changed the clause? Could it be that the question of sewage disposal had been drawn to the notaire's attention and that this change of clause would let the notaire off the hook for not checking it in the first place?

How was it possible for a court to proceed without one of the parties having been informed? Our chap received nothing and signed nothing but the court proceeded willynilly to hear the case and come to a conclusion. It has to be said that the administration of the court in question has always had a dubious reputation in its locality. I know of a case where a young man was accused of driving while over the limit. Considering that he had overshot his turning when returning from the discotheque at four in the morning and, on turning round had overtaken a gendarmerie van before driving into the ditch and accordingly being breathalysed, it was probably unwise of him to advance in his defence that the gendarmerie had driven him off the road. It was probably also tactless to offer the officers a drink when they delivered him to his parents' house. What amazes me is that he managed to find any gendarmes out after dark...they must have had a nightlight in the van. He was duly hauled up in court and had several points deducted from his licence. Not surprisingly, this would have had the effect of banning him from driving, given his previous activities behind the wheel, so his father went to the local fixer and put himself in his hands. After due consultation with the officers of the court, a price was arrived at and the points were never deducted from the licence. I've heard a lot more, but this is the only case I know about from the horse's mouth...oh, except the case where a medical certificate was lifted from a dossier before it went to the judges. Luckily, this is one of the courts due to be abolished under the reorganisation proposals brought about by Rachid Dati before Sarkozy sacked her, and you should just hear the great and the good of the area kicking up.....they'll have a damn hard job getting the court in the departmental capital to oblige them the way this one does.

Why, having obtained judgement, did the buyer wait three years before enforcing it? Given the absence of notice, was it to ensure that there could not be an appeal?

What was the lawyer doing to earn his money? Clearly, not a lot.

There is something decidedly whiffy about the whole business, and it's not just the drains.

The U.K.'s legal system, though creaky in parts, is open and impartial. In your own best interests, don't assume that the French system is likewise, or you risk ending up with a knock at the door and a nasty surprise.

Shifting boundaries in the rural scene.

For whatever reason, you have decided to buy a house in France. The bookshops and the net are awash with advice on how to get a mortgage, the necessity of independent legal advice in your own language, anything, in fact, that can transfer money from your pocket to that of the provider of all these good things.

I have yet to see any sensible advice on boundaries, beyond consulting the land registry map and walking the ground, but boundaries give rise to interminable problems if you are unlucky enough to have difficult neighbours.

Let us take a case. You have bought your rural idyll, a nice house with hedges round the garden, and you decide to repair the rotting chicken wire at the back of the garden to keep your pets secure. Two days later, you have an indignant neighbour on your doorstep, protesting that you are stealing his land. He will take you down the garden which you thought was yours and will show you a discoloured triangular stone...like the top of a pyramid for dwarf Pharoahs... which is well on your side of the new chicken wire, tucked neatly away under a hedge. That, he will tell you, is the boundary stone, and the boundary stone is incontestable proof of where the boundary lies.

At this point, you would do well to let him go away without argument, and do a little Sherlock Holmes work. Most difficult neighbours have a superiority complex, and this, allied to the usual rural view that anyone who does not speak good French must be an imbecile, makes them careless and gives you your opening. Check the pyramid and see whether it shows signs of being recently implanted..unnatural cleanliness is also a marker of dirty deeds behind the potting shed. Then go to where you think the boundary should be and see if the ground shows signs of disturbance...if it does, simply replace the pyramid in its' original resting place and put up two fingers to the neighbour who will be watching you from his attic window. Now it is up to him to take action if he wants to persist.



Should he do so, don't count on much help from your notaire, who drew up your purchase documents. While there is much hype about the protection offered by the notaire, it is just that...hype. The notaire's primary role is as a tax collector for the government which is why you are obliged to use one and cannot, as in the U.K. make a private sale between the parties. He will advise you to settle with the neighbour and if you still look mutinous, he will suggest that your only option is to hire a geometre, a surveyor, who will study the situation and impose a boundary on the warring parties by way of a document..a proces-verbal...which has legal force.
So, having just paid the fees for purchase, you now find yourself with another bill to pay and some uncertainty as to the outcome.

If you understood some French, you may have heard the notaire reading out something about 'bornage', which means marking out land, when you were signing the 'acte de vente' and would have thought that the land you purchased had been officially surveyed. In fact, in the context of the acte de vente, it means that the land has not been officially surveyed, thus the need to get it done in cases where there are problems.

The surveyor will take the land registry plan as his starting point, and will begin measuring from all the salient points to arrive at his view of where the boundary should be. You, the neighbour and anyone else whose boundaries are contiguous with yours will have to be present and all will have to sign the resulting document. The surveyor will then plant a modern boundary marker....less moveable than the pyramid - a round sign with the name of his firm attached to a solid lump of iron and concrete set well into the ground. Why can't the land registry plan be definitive, you might ask, since that is what the surveyor is using? Because it is a tax document and not conclusive proof of the nature and situation of the boundaries. And anyway, it it were definitive, the surveyor would be deprived of the chance to make money.

When there are real problems...such as where there are no obvious limits, you may be involved in the process by which folk memory is consulted. All the elderly people of the area will be summoned to give their views, to enable the surveyor to come to a conclusion....you have to watch this carefully. Village and family feuds which have nothing at all to do with you will come to the front....some elderly people may not have even been summoned if their views threaten to be contrary to your neighbour's claims....and claim and counterclaim abound. Mark you, it is a one stop introduction to the people in the area, their family history under the German occupation, and their moral and financial probity. The pity is that at this stage, your French probably won't be good enough to understand it all!

Some years ago, a British couple bought a cottage with land adjoining a farm. The boundaries on the plan were clear...one land boundary, a road on two sides, and a farm track on the other, where telegraph poles ran alongside the pathway. One year, they were walking their dogs when they noticed that the neighbour had ploughed land on their side of the track.

A mistake! The contractor hadn't understood!

The next year the contractor misunderstood again and ploughed even deeper into their land.

Not a problem!

Well, no, not for the neighbour.

The third year, they had had enough and confronted the neighbour, who assured them that it would not be in their interests to engage a surveyor as their other neighbour - the one with the land boundary - was a very difficult man and would cause trouble.

Undaunted by this propect, they summoned up a surveyor, who confirmed their original boundaries and, for good measure, found that neighbour A had also been encroaching on the land of neighbour B - the difficult one, who would cause trouble.

It was a victory, but it had to be paid for, and not only in monetary terms. They had not known their place in rural French society and accordingly suffered continual harrassment...their chickens killed by hunting dogs, their harmless moggies poisoned, the hunt hallooing round their house and shooting towards it at close range. They had their land, but never a quiet day afterwards.

It is not just private individuals who can be difficult.
Some years after I bought my first house, another British couple moved into the area, in a hamlet some three kilometres from the village. A private lane formed part of the property, running in front of their house, and local farmers found it a convenient shortcut to and from their fields. The owners were good natured, and did not close it off, but one farmer wanted to be sure, so the maire was despatched to take coffee with the new arrivals,whose grasp of French was, at that stage, rudimentary. She explained to them that ownership of the lane involved them in the costs of upkeep...obviously false as it was a private road...but that the commune was willing to help them by taking it off their hands for the symbolic price of one franc, so that they would have no worries in the future. As it seemed to change nothing, they agreed and signed over their property for one franc.
The sequel to this came some years later when the son of the cautious and enterprising farmer bought the house next door to the British couple and began a campaign of harrassment. The commune, asked to intervene, sent round a councillor who inspected the property and told the couple that the gates to their garden encroached on the commune's land.....the land they had effectively given away...by being less than one metre from the road. They were obliged to demolish their wall and gates and rebuild them further back, in their garden.


So, to be really sure of what you are buying in France you need to ask the seller to undertake an official survey before you agree to purchase, but he probably won't be willing, fearful of what cats might escape from the bag, let alone the cost involved in recapturing them.