A few months ago, the Patriarca family thought they were on a straightforward path toward building their perfect home. Instead, they find themselves in the midst of an escalating property dispute with Walter Felag Jr., a longstanding state senator, who has brought court action under through a powerful, old law to challenge the family’s plans.

The best laid plans go awry
The Patriarca family purchased their home at 49 Overhill Road in late April, according to court records. Prior to doing so, the family had shopped around Warren for a property that would be suitable for their plans — building out a larger house to provide enough space for married couple Cassie and Michael Patriarca, their two small children, Michael’s parents, Mary and Anthony, and their dog and two cats.

“We just wanted to move back to Warren,” Cassie said, surrounded by her family during an interview on Monday. “This is where my husband’s family from. We wanted our kids to go to school here and be closer to family and friends.”

The 1,100-square-foot house, as it exists, does not accommodate the family’s size. The children must share a bedroom with the parents, and the whole family shares one bathroom. The plan was to build an addition to the house and a separate in-law suite to host the grandparents, doubling the square footage and increasing the living space available to everyone.

The family did their homework prior to buying, looking up plot and tax assessor maps and working with an architect to ensure that the scope of their construction could be achieved without significant variances required by the town’s Zoning Board. They consulted with their realtor to ensure that they owned every square foot as presented on the map — including a row of tall hemlock trees that lined the eastern part of the property, which would need to be removed in order to accommodate their plans.

“Everything a civilian could possibly do to know their boundaries, we did,” said Cassie, surrounded by her family during an interview on Monday.

After spending thousands on a site survey that confirmed the property line as including those trees, more money on conceptual plans and drawings for the house addition, and knowing that they would need Zoning approval for the in-law suite and variances for overall lot coverage and setbacks for the front and rear of the property, they moved forward with their plan.

But what they did not know was that the property line that seemed to belong to them on town maps was not so straightforward to the neighbor who had planted those trees 40 years ago.

Felag responds with force
When Anthony Patriarca, who said he has known Felag for decades and used to play softball with him during his earlier years living in Warren, went over to inform the Felags on Aug. 7 that they were moving forward with their plan and had a tree removal contractor scheduled to begin work the following week — the family got a prompt response through a letter, almost immediately.

“The purpose of this letter is to notify you that the trees are ours, and also serve as a demand that you refrain from removing, cutting down, trimming or otherwise harm or deface the trees. We have engaged our own surveyor and will press our property rights to the trees and the land upon which they grow in Superior Court. If anything happens to the Hemlock trees, we will sue for damages,” the letter, signed by Walter and Elaine Felag, stated. “We will get back to you with the results of our survey, but in the meantime, we will protect our property to the fullest legal extent possible.”

A court summons came just a few days after, ordering the family to halt their plans and making the claim that the property in question legally belongs to the Felag family.

The court action brought by the Felags asserts that the trees planted by the Felags shortly after they moved into 51 Overhill Road established the property line, and has since gone undisputed for 40 years since. The original agreement between the Felags and the former owners of 49 Overhill Road, Jack and Betty Huss, was a verbal one. In the decades since, the Felags and their attorney argue, they have tended the trees and managed the land without question or protest.

“Here, the tree line between the Felags’ property and the Patriarcas’ property has been respected as the boundary between these two lots for forty years,” reads a letter to the Warren Zoning Board prepared by Felag’s attorney, Peter Skwirz. “Accordingly, the proper boundary line from the 51 Overhill Road side of the Patriarcas’ property is the tree line, and not the line depicted on the survey submitted with the Patriarcas application.”

Felag said on Friday in a phone interview that the concern is not just based on the property line, but the trees themselves, which he claims are vital for water mitigation to prevent worse flooding of his property.

“I’m at the bottom of the hill. So all the water goes right into my property,” he said. “I’ve had water in my cellar before, and I have sinkholes in different locations on my property, so it’s imperative that those hemlocks provide that barrier.”

Felags have a case
According to Rhode Island General Laws 34-7-1, enacted in 1896, the Felags likely have a legitimate legal claim to the land in question, which constitutes an apprxomately 11-foot-wide span of trees, brush and woods that slope downwards toward 51 Overhill Road.

The law essentially states that if a piece of property has been utilized and unchallenged by another property owner for a period of 10 years, the user of that property has legal right to claim the land as their own — regardless of what a plot or assessors map might say.

There are a number of requirements to be met in order to satisfy that law, known as adverse possession, but the Patriarcas realize now that they might be in the midst of a perfect storm where the law does indeed side with the Felags. They said the law, as written, is not fair and should be changed.

“This is something that no new homeowner would ever think about when they’re looking for property. And it seems like there’s no way to legally protect yourself from what happened to us,” said Michael. “I would like some kind of law in there to protect a new homebuyer. Because this is crazy. To think that, in the stressful time of buying a home, you can get everything set and then this can happen, and there’s nothing you could have done prior to help it.”

Mediation attempts stall
The family has attempted to mediate with the Felags, offering to build a natural retention wall in place of the hemlock trees with engineered drainage that they claim would improve the existing water mitigation efficiency of the trees. On top of that wall, they offered to eat the cost of installing 12-foot bushes to retain the privacy that the hemlocks had offered.

But those mediation attempts between the parties haven’t progressed to this point.

“We can’t skew what’s happening here. We’re not trying to take anything that’s not ours,” Michael said. “This is something we’ve bought and we knew what we were buying, and now it’s being taken from us.”

If that happens, the family worries they won’t even be able to sell the property without incurring a substantial financial loss, since they will have lost a significant amount of lot square footage.

The Patriarcas said they had looked into alternative plans that would build the home vertically rather than extending toward the disputed property line, but there are two problems with that. One, it would cost more money and extend the length of their untenable living conditions, and two, they wouldn’t be able to live in the house during renovations, if they would even be approved.

“Because of everything going on in the world, apartments are outrageously priced and not available,” Cassie said.

For the Patriarcas, the situation feels bleak.

“Your bushes are more important than our lives? Our house?” said Mary, who for years said she had greeted Felag warmly during the Fourth of July Celebration in Bristol and has known him for decades. “If we cut the trees down, they can still live there. If they get our land, we can’t live here. That’s the bottom line. Your trees are more important than a family’s home.”

Felag said he is sympathetic to the family’s plight, but held firm on his stance regarding the property line and the trees.

“I’ve known the family for years. Obviously I’m sympathetic towards them, and it’s a very emotional issue, but it’s unfortunately an emotional issue for both families,” he said. “The issue needs to be resolved.”