Dear Bob,

I have the Neighbor From Hell. It started 3 years ago when our boys didn't get along. Well, I told her a few things like, get your boys and yourself some help and rubbed in her 3 failed marriages, and since then she has been harassing us ever since.

She started coming out of her house with her video camera standing on her lawn filming us. Then she would snap pictures of us. She would yell over to my children and call them names, then the prank calls started in the middle of night. I finally found out it was her calling from pay phones on her way home from the casino.

She had me arrested. I was passing her boys when they got off the bus and the nasty one (the one that is like her) hit my van as I was passing. I had backed up just to scare him. Well, being the honest person that I am I told the police what I did and they arrested me for felonious assault. We are the victims and I was arrested!! You would think that she had her revenge, but no, she kept it up and it only got worse. I was on probation for 1 year with no restrictions other than to stay away from her. I now had a camera up on my house to get on film just how she was harassing us. The court looked at the tapes that I had and couldn't believe it. They tried to get her to come into court but when she heard that I had tapes she said no. My lawyer also found out that she has done similar things to her ex-husband because their law office handled her divorce.

My driveway lines up to her house. We have basically tried to really ignore this person and it has gotten a lot better, but just the other day I saw the kid (who is not driving) point a toy gun at us and we called the police. This is where it all starts, toy gun and then a real one. We are a little afraid. Why do the nasty ones get away with things and the good ones get caught?

The boy now has his friends harassing us also. We have put our house on the market 2 different times but it is really hard to sell here right now. Plus, I love my house and don't want to move. What advice can you give me? We are not taping anymore because she was taking over our lives and we decided to get her out of our lives by not watching her all the time and we were doing so well and then the toy gun incident happened and we are back to square one. I can't get anyone to listen as they (law and legal counsel) think it’s all a nuisance. Please help!!

from Michigan

Dear Michigan,

Your lawyer should realize this is beyond a nuisance, and could easily file litigation for ongoing harassment against the neighbor.

Since you have counsel, I recommend you pursue that. Meanwhile, don't give in to temptation as you did by feigning backing up toward the kid, and return to videotaping (passive taping will help -- set up web cameras that catch everything for those times you need evidence). Stay the good guy, build your body of evidence, and sue these people for harassment and all the resultant damage.

For future reference, avoid saying hostile things to your neighbor when the kids aren’t getting along. I’m sure you felt justified in saying it, but it may have helped spawn the last three years of otherwise avoidable conflict.