My neighbors and I share a road that needs to be fixed, who pays the cost?

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Road Maintenance in Larger Developments

In the larger developments, road maintenance agreements are put in place to define how the cost of maintaining the roads will be shared among the property owners, with management of the roads handled by the Homeowner’s Association (HOA) and the cost of maintenance included in the HOA members’ dues.

Challenges with Few Property Owners

Road maintenance agreements are less common where a driveway or road is shared by only a few properties owners, leaving an apportionment of the cost of maintaining or repairing the shared driveway or road to the property owners themselves.

Potential for Disagreements

This often leads to disagreements between the property owners, particularly where one or more of them refuse to contribute to the cost or commit to paying only a small part of the cost.

Legal Framework in California

In those cases where there is no road maintenance agreement in place, and the property owners can agree on how the maintenance or repair costs will be shared, California law provides the cost will be allocated according to each owner’s proportional use of the shared driveway or road, with the property owners at the furthest end of the driveway or road, paying more than those owners are the nearest end.

Complexity in Calculating Proportional Use

While this may sound simple, calculating the "proportional use" of the driveway by each user can be difficult, particularly when there are differing levels of use, such as where on property owner used the road for his business, with heavy trucks using the road for the business, while other owners only use the road to drive their cars to and from their homes.

A Case Example

Starting with a simple example, I had a client who lived on a private court with four houses all sharing a common roadway from the street. The roadway terminated in a turn-around, with the driveways for each of the four houses attaching to the turn-around like spokes on a wheel.

Dispute Resolution

The use of the road by all four of the property owners was similar but there was no road maintenance agreement in place and when it came time to replace the road, a dispute arose between the property owners over how the cost of replacing the road would be shared among them. Once we became involved, the matter settled quickly, with each property owner agreement to pay the share ascribed to them based on their proportional use of the road.

Complications in Other Cases

Unfortunately, not all cases are as simple to resolve. In another case, our client shared a driveway with three other properties. Our clients’ property was the closest to the street but when it can time to replace the shared driveway, the other two property owners wanted our client to pay a full third of the replacement cost.

Negotiation and Agreement

Again, there was no road maintenance agreement in place, and we were again able to resolve the case short of litigation, but reaching agreement on our clients’ proportional share of the cost was complicated. Our clients only used the shared driveway to drive their cars to and from their house, while one neighbor, a builder, used the road to drive heavy equipment to and from his property for storage. The third neighbor ran a commercial horse stable on their property, with high numbers of patrons and delivery vehicles using the driveway to get to the stables.

Final Agreement and Ongoing Maintenance

In the end, after counting the number of round trips to and from the respective properties and adding in a “penalty” based on the weight of the vehicles using the driveway, we reached agreement on the “proportional use” of the road by each property, with the other two owners agreeing to pay a premium to enhance the strength of the driveway to extend the life of the driveway. We then negotiated a road maintenance agreement between the parties, which now defines who future maintenance and repair costs will be shared.

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