Entitled neighbors sometimes require you to be straightforward.

But a woman shares how she made a fair enough suggestion to her neighbor and he seemed offended.

She wants to be a good neighbor, so she’s wondering if she stepped over the line.

Let’s analyze the situation.

AITA for telling my neighbor if he wants a tree on our property gone HE needs to pay for it?

My husband (35 year old male) and I (31 year old female) have had our house for about 7 years now.

It’s on a quiet residential street and even though we have a few neighbors, we don’t often talk much and are just friendly to one another.

One of my neighbors, we’ll call him Jack, has a garden.

He shares a fence line with us and on our side of the fence against it is a small tree.

I don’t know what kind it is (dogwood maybe??), but it’s a pretty full tree with lots of leaves.

Everything sounds normal and lovely so far…

We’re getting some work done on the house (painting) and while the contractors were there, Jack was talking to my husband and me about what we had planned for the house and yard, etc.

He asked us if we were planning to take any more trees down (we had to take a dead one down not long ago and have gotten rid of some brush), and asked specifically about the tree on the fence line.

Now, we don’t care one way or another about the tree so we were like “Yeah, well, maybe if it starts being an issue for the fence (chain link) we can relocate it or something.” etc.

But he kept pushing, insisting that relocation was expensive and “young trees die” and all that. He was a bit condescending.

The neighbor had ulterior motives.

This was not the first time he’s asked us about this tree and he’s made other backhanded comments to our contractors about us and gotten them to try and take down the tree behind our backs.

Not sure what his deal is, but our other neighbor has complained about him too.

She was growing tired of his shenanigans.

Finally, I said: “Well if you want the tree gone so bad you’ll have to pay for it.”

I meant for it to sound joking but I think it came off harsher than I meant.

My hubby laughed with me at the joke, but the neighbor got mad and kinda excused himself from the conversation after that.

I asked my hubby if I had overstepped and he agreed with me. If HE wants the tree gone HE can pay for it.

I also agree!

My husband thinks the reason he wants the tree gone so badly is because it blocks sunlight in his garden.

Jack could just TELL US that, but he didn’t. He didn’t even offer to go 50/50 on relocation with us or anything.

He was just making passive-aggressive comments like he knew better than us.

It’s difficult dealing with entitled people.

My husband says what I did was fine but I’m not so sure.

I want to be on at least decent terms with our neighbors, and picking a fight over a tree just isn’t worth it.

I’ll absolutely not be doing anything to the tree, but I do feel bad for the tone of my words.

AITA?

I think the neighbor should be the one worried about his behavior.

Let’s see if Reddit agrees!

A reader shares their thoughts.

Another reader chimes in.

Someone makes a suggestion.

To the point.

A commenter shares their point of view.

Exactly.

It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) hurt to ask!

But this guy crossed a line for sure.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.