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Your Neighbor's Tree Hangs Over Your Yard. In Maine, You Can Cut It.

Published August 10, 2026 · 18 min read

There is an eighty foot red oak in Cape Elizabeth, roughly a hundred years old, standing near the line between two houses. The trunk is on one property. The leader and most of the limbs reach out over the other. In 2020 the downhill neighbors started asking a tree service whether those branches were a hazard. In 2023 the Maine Supreme Judicial Court told them what they were allowed to do about it.

That case is why this article exists. Almost every answer you will find online to "can I cut my neighbor's branches" is written for a national audience, hedged into uselessness, or lifted from another state. Maine has a real answer, it is recent, it is unanimous, and it came out of a yard fifteen minutes from downtown Portland.

The rule: you can cut, and you do not owe the tree anything

In Atkins v. Adams, 2023 ME 59, argued July 6 and decided August 29, 2023, the Law Court held at paragraph 1: "We affirm, holding that, under the common law, property owners have the right to cut any part of a non-boundary tree that encroaches onto their property, regardless of how their actions affect the tree."

Read that last clause again, because it is the part people get wrong. The Atkinses had argued the court should impose a duty of reasonable care, meaning their neighbors could trim but not in a way that harmed the oak. Seven justices said no. If the branch is over your line, you may cut it, and you are not liable to your neighbor if the cutting damages or even kills the tree.

The Court's reasoning was about physical invasion, not about landscaping. At paragraph 22: "Encroaching vegetation is a physical invasion onto private property... We would essentially be forcing the Adamses to suffer a continuing physical occupation were we to limit their right to engage in self-help."

So the popular belief is exactly backwards. People think the tree's owner controls the whole tree. In Maine, the owner controls the trunk, and everything past the boundary plane belongs to the argument.

Three limits that matter more than the rule

The holding is broad. Its edges are not, and the edges are where a homeowner gets into trouble.

You may not step across the line to do it. Footnote 7 of the opinion is explicit: "A property owner engaging in self-help may not enter the adjoining property to trim vegetation encroaching onto the owner's property without consent of the owner of the adjoining property." Cut from your side, at the boundary plane. A ladder leaned into their yard is a trespass, and a tree service you hired inherits your limits, not better ones.

It applies to non-boundary trees only. The whole holding is limited to trees whose trunk sits wholly on the neighbor's land. A tree straddling the line is a different legal animal, covered below.

The Court refused to decide the one question everybody will ask next. Footnote 10: "The Atkinses did not seek relief based on this statute, and we take no position whether relief would be obtainable under the statute or whether the statute applies at all in this context." The statute it declined to reach is Maine's timber trespass law, and that statute is expensive.

What overcutting costs, and why it is worse in a suburb than in a woodlot

Title 14, Section 7552 says that without permission of the owner a person may not "cut down, destroy, damage or carry away any forest product, ornamental or fruit tree... from land not that person's own."

The damages come in two tiers, not one. Section 7552(4)(A): a person who "negligently or without fault" violates the section owes two times the owner's damages, or $250, whichever is greater. Section 7552(4)(B): a person who does it "intentionally or knowingly" owes three times the damages, or $500. Malice adds punitive damages on top under paragraph D. Every summary that calls this "Maine's treble damages statute" has dropped the tier that actually catches accidental line crossers.

The multiplier is not the expensive part. The measure is. Under Section 7552(3)(B) the owner picks how damages are calculated, and subparagraph (5) gives this option: "If the lost trees are located within 400 feet of a dwelling, the costs of replacing, replanting and restoring the trees with trees of comparable size and the same or equivalent species and the actual costs for cleanup." Ornamental and fruit trees get the same replacement measure with no distance limit at all.

Replacing a mature oak with a tree of comparable size is not a lumber calculation. It is a nursery, crane and labor calculation, and in a residential neighborhood essentially every tree is within 400 feet of a dwelling. That base number, then doubled or tripled, is the real exposure.

Two more clauses are worth knowing before anyone gets confident. Professional fees, including attorney's fees, are recoverable under Section 7552(5) only "as long as the person first has written notice or actual knowledge that a claim is being asserted." Fees do not run from the day of the cut. They run from the day you say something. And under Section 7552(6)(C), if the cutter makes a written settlement offer and you turn it down, you cannot recover interest, costs or professional fees incurred after that date unless you later prove the claim was worth more than the offer.

There is also a carve out the statute makes plainly, in the same paragraph: public utilities and their contractors "are not liable for damages under this paragraph for lost trees the trimming or removal of which is necessary to provide safe and reliable service."

A tree on the line belongs to both of you

If the trunk itself straddles the boundary, none of the above applies. Atkins states the distinction at footnote 5: a boundary tree "is the common property of both proprietors as tenants in common." Neither owner can unilaterally remove it, and cutting it down is not self help, it is destroying property you only half own.

Maine also has a timber harvesting statute, Title 17 Section 2511, that fines harvesting a marked line tree without the abutter's permission between $250 and $1,000. Read its exemptions before relying on it: Section 2511(3)(D) exempts harvesting on parcels of five acres or less, and the definition requires an "established property line" that is blazed or painted. For a normal house lot in Portland or Falmouth, that statute almost certainly does not reach you, and the operative rule is common ownership plus Section 7552 exposure. That reading is ours, from the exemption text, not a court's holding.

The tree by the street is not yours, and that part is state law

The strip between the sidewalk and the curb feels like part of the yard. Statewide it is not, and the rule is one sentence long. Title 30-A, Section 3281: "All trees within or upon the limits of any highway are public shade trees." Every town in this region inherits that definition whether or not it has written a tree ordinance of its own.

Section 3283 then sets up a mutual veto that catches people going both directions. The landowner may trim, cut or remove a public shade tree "only with the consent of a tree warden or the conservation commission." The town may trim, cut or remove one "only with the consent of the landowner." Neither side acts alone. The exceptions are narrow and listed: work ordered by proper authority to lay out, alter or widen a highway, to lessen the danger of travel on highways, or to suppress tree pests or insects.

The state penalty for cutting one anyway is close to symbolic. Section 3284 makes it a civil violation carrying a forfeiture of "not less than $5 nor more than $25," paid to the municipality. Do not read that as permission. The real money is in Section 7552 above, and in whatever the town has layered on top. Three towns here have layered on a great deal, and three have layered on almost nothing.

Portland. Chapter 29 of the city code, "Vegetation," defines public trees to include everything growing on any street, park or public place, and defines a street as the entire width of the public right of way. Section 29-18 requires a permit for essentially any contact: "No person shall plant, spray, fertilize, prune, remove, cut or otherwise disturb above or below the ground any tree on any street, park or public place without first filing an application and procuring a permit from the city arborist." Then Section 29-20(a) reverses the intuition again. The abutting owner has an affirmative duty to prune those same trees, at their own expense, to keep clearance of ten feet over sidewalks and twelve feet over streets. Ignore a ten day notice and the city does the work and bills you. So on a Portland street tree you can be cited for cutting it and cited for not cutting it, and the line between the two runs through the arborist's office.

One honesty note on that chapter. The compiled PDF we read from the city's own document host carries a "Rev. 12-1-00" header while Article I bears a 2020 ordinance stamp, and the Article II sections trace to a 1978 ordinance. We could not confirm whether Sections 29-16 through 29-24 have been amended since. The text is the city's, the currency is unverified.

South Portland, and this is the one that will surprise a homeowner. Section 2-210 covers city trees on the familiar model: no planting, spraying, fertilizing, preserving, pruning, removing or cutting above ground without a permit from the city arborist, with an emergency exception for storm damage provided the arborist is told within two days. Section 2-209(e) goes further than Portland's and reaches onto private land, letting the arborist order trimming or removal of a private tree when necessary for public safety or to stop disease or insects spreading to public trees.

But the ordinance that matters is newer. On November 14, 2023 the City Council passed a Tree Protection Ordinance that regulates removing trees on your own property. It defines a Significant Tree as a non-invasive species measuring at least 10 inches DBH, and a Heritage Tree as one that is 90 or more years old, or 60 inches DBH, or listed on Maine's Big Tree List. Removing them can require Tree Protection Approval, and if it does, you compensate: replant 1.5 trees on site for each Protected Tree removed, 5 for each one in a shoreland area, 2 if you replant off site, or pay into the Tree Mitigation Fund.

Read the threshold before you panic, because the city is explicit that most homeowners sit under it. Approval is triggered by site clearing, which the ordinance defines as removing 10 or more Significant Trees or 3 or more Heritage Trees, or by a project that needs Planning Board review. Invasive species and trees that are sick, dead or dying are exempt, along with other categories listed at Section 27-2103(a). The city's own advice is worth repeating: if you are cutting anything substantial, have a qualified tree professional document the size, age, species and health before the saw comes out, because that document is what the city asks for if a neighbor complains.

Scarborough is the newest and almost nobody knows it exists yet. The town adopted Chapter 1106, the Tree Care Ordinance, on November 5, 2025. Its applicability clause claims authority over trees in rights of way, parks and public places, and also over trees on private property "that constitute a nuisance or hazard as described herein." The description is in Section D.5.e, and it is narrower than the applicability clause sounds: no owner may let a tree on their property obstruct or interfere with pedestrians or the view of drivers. If the obstruction persists, the Town Arborist notifies the owner to prune or remove it, and if the owner does not comply, the town does the work and charges them for it. Section D.5.a is the flat rule: nobody except the Town Arborist, a designee, or an approved contractor may prune, plant, transplant or remove a public tree. Section D.5.b then quietly concedes that a public tree can be standing on private land, and requires the arborist to notify the owner before pruning it. Topping any public tree is unlawful for any person and for the town itself, storm damage excepted at the arborist's call. The penalty is up to $100 for each day of the violation, and if a public tree dies as a result, the penalty also includes its replacement value as the arborist sets it. There is a heritage tree section, but read what it actually does: it makes identifying heritage trees one of the arborist's duties and lists what qualifies. It attaches no protection standard and no permit to that status.

Westbrook stops at the property line. Chapter 295, Article I, is the 1972 Municipal Tree Ordinance, and Section 295-7A(1) requires a permit from the Municipal Arborist before anyone plants, sprays, prunes, removes or otherwise disturbs a tree on any street or municipally owned property, with 48 hours notice and a storm exception reportable within two days. The one clause worth catching is the definition at Section 295-2, which makes public trees "all shade and ornamental trees now or hereafter growing on any street or any public areas or overhanging said street or public areas." Overhanging. A tree rooted in your yard whose limbs reach the street is a public tree in Westbrook. Article II of the same chapter sounds like it might reach further, since it is titled Green Space and talks about forest, but Section 295-14 limits it to parcels the city has designated as green space, and Section 295-13 says those are publicly owned parcels. Nothing in the chapter regulates a tree standing wholly on private land.

Falmouth has the thinnest tree law of the six. The town code's only substantive tree provision is Section 2-200, the duties of the tree warden, who is responsible for the care and control of all public shade trees upon and along all highways, streets and parks, for a tree planting program, and for a town forest. The section's own footnote points at 30-A M.R.S.A. Section 3282, which is to say Falmouth adopted the state framework and did not build on it. The phrase "shade tree" appears four times in the entire code, and the other three are planting requirements in site plan review, not restrictions on what you may cut. On your own land in Falmouth, the answer is Atkins and Section 7552, and nothing local.

If a tree falls, the answer is less satisfying

Here is where we are going to disappoint you rather than round it off.

We could not find a Maine appellate decision deciding when a landowner is liable for a tree that falls onto a neighbor's property. Not a bad one. None. What that means in practice is that there is no strict liability rule in Maine: the mere fact that the tree was yours does not make the damage yours. Liability would have to be proven under ordinary negligence, which turns on whether the owner knew or should have known the tree was defective.

You will find confident articles asserting that Maine applies a lighter inspection duty to rural land than to urban land. We looked for Maine authority adopting that distinction and did not find any. That doctrine is real in American tree law generally, and it may well be blended in from another state's summary, which is a documented failure mode on exactly these searches.

The practical consequence is the only useful thing here, and it is about paper. Notice is the element. If you think your neighbor's tree is dying, tell them in writing and keep a copy. That converts a future argument about what they should have known into a question about a dated letter.

Near the water, a different set of rules takes over

If your land is within 250 feet of a great pond, river, tidal water or the upland edge of a wetland, or within 75 feet of certain streams, you are in the shoreland zone, and the state's clearing standards apply on your own property whether or not a neighbor is involved.

The strictest rules sit in the buffer strip. Chapter 1000, the state rule every municipal shoreland ordinance is built from, measures that strip at 100 feet horizontal distance from a great pond classified GPA or a river flowing to a great pond classified GPA, and 75 feet from any other water body, tributary stream, or the upland edge of a wetland. That GPA qualifier is doing real work and most summaries drop it.

Inside the strip, Section 15(P)(2)(a) allows "no cleared opening greater than 250 square feet in the forest canopy," measured from the outer limits of the tree or shrub crown, with a single footpath up to six feet wide carved out as an exception. Section 15(P)(2)(b) then caps the total: "no more than 40% of the total volume of trees four (4) inches or more in diameter, measured at 4 1/2 feet above ground level may be removed in any ten (10) year period."

Two allowances people miss, and one they invent. Section 15(P)(2)(d) reads, in full, "Pruning of tree branches, on the bottom 1/3 of the tree is allowed." That is the whole permission, and there is no general dead branch exemption anywhere in the rule, which is what you will be told at the hardware store. Standing dead trees are the real exemption: under Section 15(Q), removing one that died of natural causes needs no permit and no replanting, as long as the removal does not create new lawn or other permanently cleared area and you leave the stump. The rule defines a dead tree for that purpose as one containing no foliage during the growing season. A hazard tree that is still alive is treated differently again, and the code enforcement officer may require an evaluation from a licensed forester or arborist before it comes down.

One caveat outranks all of it. Chapter 1000 is a floor, not a ceiling: where a town's adopted shoreland ordinance is more restrictive, the town's version governs your parcel, and your municipal code office is the authority on which one you are under.

Power lines

Central Maine Power's authority is narrower than most people assume. Title 35-A Section 2522 lets a utility trim, cut or remove trees "located within the public right-of-way of a public way" and trim "portions of trees encroaching upon the public right-of-way," subject to conditions including thirty days notice to the municipality and consultation with the landowner before removing a shade or ornamental tree. It does not apply in emergencies. Transmission corridors are governed by easements whose terms vary parcel by parcel. CMP publishes a recommended distribution trim zone of about eight feet to either side of the conductors and fifteen feet overhead, and it maintains a customer notice list that any customer may join, advertised annually as a bill insert.

What we could not read

Cape Elizabeth is the town this whole article came out of, and its tree ordinance is the one document we still have not read through. We can now say exactly what it is and where it lives, which is more than we could say before. It is Article III of Chapter 18, the Conservation Ordinance, effective March 13, 2024, and the town publishes it at capeelizabeth.gov rather than at the capeelizabeth.com address most search results still hand you. Its own table of contents lays out nine sections: Section 18-3-1 Purpose, 18-3-2 Definitions, 18-3-3 Tree Warden, 18-3-4 Duties of Tree Warden, 18-3-5 Tree Permits Required, 18-3-6 Tree Permit Procedures, 18-3-7 Abuse or Mutilation of Public Trees, 18-3-8 Interference with Tree Warden, 18-3-9 Penalties.

We read that contents page in the town's own document. We have not read the body of those nine sections, and we are not going to summarize what a permit requirement covers from its heading, because the difference between a permit on public trees and a permit that reaches private ones is the entire question and a title does not answer it. If you own land in Cape Elizabeth and are planning to cut, call the town before you do, and ask specifically whether Section 18-3-5 reaches trees on private property. The statewide floor still applies in the meantime: the trees along the road are public shade trees under Title 30-A, Section 3281, and neither you nor the town can take one down without the other agreeing.

This is a plain language summary of published decisions, statutes and ordinances, not legal advice. Like fence rules by town and noise ordinances, this is a case where what your neighbor confidently told you is probably a rule from somewhere else. And if the dispute is about winter rather than summer, the answer to who has to clear the walk is in sidewalk snow removal rules by town.

FAQ

Can I cut my neighbor's tree branches that hang over my yard in Maine?

Yes. In Atkins v. Adams, 2023 ME 59, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court held that property owners have the right to cut any part of a non-boundary tree that encroaches onto their property, regardless of how their actions affect the tree. You owe the tree's owner no duty of reasonable care toward the tree.

Can I go onto my neighbor's property to cut the overhanging branches?

No. Footnote 7 of Atkins v. Adams states that a property owner engaging in self help "may not enter the adjoining property to trim vegetation encroaching onto the owner's property without consent of the owner of the adjoining property." Cut from your own side, at the boundary plane, and a contractor you hire is bound by the same limit.

What happens if I cut past the property line in Maine?

Title 14, Section 7552 makes you liable for two times the owner's damages if you acted negligently or without fault, and three times if you acted intentionally or knowingly, with punitive damages available for malice. For a tree within 400 feet of a dwelling the owner may measure damages as the cost of replacing the tree with one of comparable size, which is usually far higher than lumber value.

Who owns a tree that sits right on the property line in Maine?

Both owners, as tenants in common. Atkins v. Adams describes a boundary tree as one whose trunk straddles the division line, which makes it "the common property of both proprietors." Neither owner may remove it unilaterally, and the self help rule for overhanging branches does not apply to it.

Do I own the tree between the sidewalk and the street in Maine?

No. Title 30-A, Section 3281 provides that all trees within or upon the limits of any highway are public shade trees, statewide. Under Section 3283 a landowner may cut or remove one only with the consent of a tree warden or the conservation commission, and the town may cut or remove one only with the consent of the landowner. Portland adds a permit from the city arborist under Chapter 29 Section 29-18, South Portland the same under Section 2-210, and Westbrook the same under Section 295-7, whose definition of a public tree also reaches any tree overhanging a street. Scarborough went furthest most recently: Chapter 1106, adopted November 5, 2025, reserves all pruning and removal of public trees to the Town Arborist and bills private owners who let their own trees block a sidewalk or a driver's sightline.

If my neighbor's tree falls on my house in Maine, who pays?

There is no rule making the tree's owner automatically responsible, and we could not find a Maine appellate decision setting the standard for falling trees. Liability would have to be proven under ordinary negligence, which turns on whether the owner knew or should have known the tree was defective. Putting a warning in writing is what converts that from an argument into a record.

Can I clear trees on my own land near the water in Maine?

Only within limits. In the shoreland zone, within 250 feet of great ponds, rivers, tidal waters and wetland edges, no more than 40 percent of the volume of trees four inches or more in diameter may be removed in any ten year period, and no opening in the canopy larger than 250 square feet is allowed inside the buffer strip. Your town's ordinance governs and may be stricter than the state standard.