This couple always dreamt of living in privacy, so they bought a house far into the forest.

However, even a remote area couldn’t totally protect them from their entitled neighbors.

When their neighbors tried to take a shortcut on their private road, a turf war begins that creates some serious bad blood.

Read on for the full story!

AITA for not allowing my new neighbour to use my road for access.

In my country, there is a saying: “If you want to live in the forest, you have to buy the forest!”

So we did! Me and my husband’s life dream was to live somewhere private, and a few years ago we finally did it!

COVID made home office possible, so there was no reason to live in the city anymore. So we sold our apartment and bought a nice house which was surrounded by forest.

The house is pretty remote.

Our closest neighbour is 400 meters away behind a grove of trees.

Historically, there used to be a road going from the front our house to the next house and the road connected 2 parallel roads both leading to the nearest town.

Due to the rugged nature of the terrain, road access is limited.

The house next to us has been empty for 30 years, and even before that, the people who lived there used the entrance on their side, as back then, both roads leading to the town were gravel.

So the last time the road was used as a road was even before the previous owner got the place in 60s.

Nature has taken over the part that is between two houses, but the path is still passable with vehicles.

One day, their private oasis got a little less private.

This summer, someone bought the neighbouring land with the remains of the house to build their home there, which is fine.

One day, I saw a lady driving through our driveway on the path leading to the next house, so I jumped on the ATV and followed and asked “Why are you driving on our road?”

The lady answered, “Well we thought we are going to use this road because the entrance this way leads to the paved road!”

The homeowner tried to be polite at first.

I pointed out that we have a sign “Private road, enter only with permission!”

She replied, “I looked it up, it used to be a public road in the 50s.”

I told her “Not my problem, please don’t use our road!”

Controlling their private road is well within their rights as the owners of the home.

The government let everyone privatize many small roads in the 90s in my country, so they don’t have an obligation to take care of those, so it is our private road.

I get why she is mad. The road our driveway leads into is paved, but they have to use a gravel road, and it is a ~10km drive into town.

They thought they would use our driveway to access the better road.

If they let their neighbors use their road, it would disturb the privacy they so longed for.

I told her that they can’t drive there and she called me an AH for that.

We bought the place with the idea of privacy, other people using our driveway would mean no privacy.

The disgruntled neighbors must have contacted the employees, because one day they received a call.

Later, I got a call from some local district office and they told me that it is not nice to deny others access to their home, and again I explained that they have access!

The officials themself made the road private decades ago, and the official told me that this was not nice of me.

AITA?

It turns out this new house isn’t quite the sanctuary they hoped it would be.

What did Reddit think?

It’s entirely possible their disgruntled neighbor placed a fake call to scare them off.

The couple potentially has a lot more than just noise to worry about.

While sharing access may be the neighborly thing to do, it’s not compulsory.

This commenter suspects the district officer’s motives are rather self-serving.

They wanted to enjoy the quiet life, but instead they found themselves having to gate-keep their peace.

It turns out privacy comes at a price.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.