When you live in a neighborhood, sometimes the trees from one yard will have roots that grow into another yard.

What would you do if you had roots coming up into your yard, causing a tripping hazard?

That is what the new homeowner in this story experienced, so he dug the roots out and now the neighbor is mad that he may have killed his tree.

AITA For removing tree roots from my yard

My family and I moved into a new home this spring.

We had previously lived in apartments and we now have our first yard for our kids to play in.

The neighborhood we moved into has a lot of mature trees, and this being the first time I’ve had to do my own yard work, there has been a learning curve.

One of my neighbor’s yard is separated from ours by a chain link fence.

There is a large tree just on their side of the fence.

Some roots from the tree spread into my yard and some of them are growing on the surface of the ground.

They are visible and are above the ground quite a bit.

That is unfortunate, poor kid.

About a month ago, my kids were running around and playing and my daughter tripped on one of the roots, fell, and ended up breaking her wrist trying to catch herself.

Of course, this was very upsetting to my wife and I and she pretty much told me to do something about the roots so this didn’t happen again.

So, I bought some tools and started tearing the roots up as best I could.

I got them out to a point that nothing is sticking above the ground anymore and filled the top in with fresh soil and grass seed.

My neighbor must have noticed the work I did because he made a comment about the fresh soil.

I told him I had to remove some roots since my daughter tripped on one.

He asked what I meant by “remove” and I told him I dug a bunch out and cut them out as best I could.

It is certainly possible that the tree will die.

He got mad and told me I probably killed his tree.

I told him that removing a few roots isn’t going to hurt a tree that big and they were creating a tripping hazard.

And since they were in my yard, I did what I needed to do to remove them.

He told me there are other ways to deal with roots like that instead of cutting them out and causing stress to the tree and he would have gladly helped if I had asked.

He said that tree is probably going to die which means it is probably going to have to be removed and said that a tree that large is going to cost thousands of dollars to take out.

It would definitely cost thousands to remove.

I told him that sounds ridiculously expensive.

He said if the tree dies and he has to have it cut down, he’s going to ask me to pay for some of it because of what I did to the roots.

I told him good luck with that and that I’m not paying anything for his tree.

It would have been nice to at least ask about it.

He called me a jerk and told me the previous neighbors at least had the decency to ask for help when they didn’t know what they were doing instead of causing damage to other people’s property.

I told my wife about it and she thinks the guy is just being a jerk and agrees with me that taking a few roots from the top of the ground isn’t going to hurt a tree that big.

She also agrees that there is no way we are going to pay for anything for this guy’s tree.

We were just making sure our yard is safe for our kids to play in, it’s not our fault his tree grew roots into our yard.

While technically correct, they could have just put more dirt on top of the root to hide it away.

Let’s see if the people in the comments have any other thoughts.

Exactly, he knew it would impact his neighbor’s property.

Yes, he needs to look up tree law.

This person had something similar happen and paid for the tree removal.

Here is someone who confirms it costs thousands to remove a large tree.

This person says he should have talked to the neighbor.

This guy should have at least talked to the neighbor first.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.