Owning a business in a tight-knit community means good neighborly relations can make or break your reputation.

But when a snow-plowing dispute arose, one homeowner found themselves skating on thin ice with the folks next door.

Read on to see how it all played out!

AITA for refusing to split plowing costs for a shared driveway?

This past spring, I purchased and moved into a new house.

Part of the reason I moved was to be within walking distance to my office, shopping, bars, etc.

The homeowner describes the overall layout of the house and the driveway.

Also, my house has two driveways — one that is partially shared with the neighbor and a smaller one on the other side of the house in front of my garage.

I’ve mainly used the longer, shared driveway so far.

Since I don’t plan on driving much in the winter and don’t want to deal with clearing snow, I plan to use the smaller driveway and just maintain my walkway or enter through the garage.

Soon their neighbor came to them with a proposition.

I was approached by my neighbor at the start of the winter, asking to split the cost of plowing the shared driveway 50/50.

I told them I’d think about it, but honestly, I think it’s ridiculous to ask for any money, especially as much as half the cost.

The homeowner has several problems with this idea.

First of all, the neighbors don’t actually live there. They rent out two units in the building and just use the garage for storage.

On top of that, they spent the whole summer renovating the building.

This included blocking the shared driveway for days at a time, parking construction vehicles on my property, and even dumping a bunch of concrete on my land.

They just aren’t good neighbors.

The homeowner also disagrees with the frequency the neighbors recommended for the service.

They also wanted to have the plow guy come every time it snowed at least three inches, which I think is overkill.

We live in New England.

I told the neighbors I wasn’t interested.

We have had three significant storms so far, and they haven’t had anyone out to plow at all.

The homeowner doesn’t feel the neighbors are being sincere in their request.

I feel like they were just trying to take advantage of me since I’ve been pretty understanding with all the renovation mess and stuff.

That said, I would use my portion of the driveway if it was plowed, so maybe I should pay something.

But they worry about the consequences if they say no.

I don’t want the little community I live in to think I’m a bad neighbor. They’ve been owners in the neighborhood for a lot longer than me, and I don’t want them to hurt my reputation.

I own a business in town, so having people in the community speak poorly about me really matters.

The wife hasn’t spoken to me since I turned them down, but the husband seems mostly okay with it.

AITA?

Tension between these neighbors was piling up about as high as the snow.

What did Reddit think?

The homeowner could use their neighbor’s request as leverage to get other things they want.

While the situation isn’t fair, it probably wouldn’t hurt the homeowner to do a little more research into the matter.

Since both parties aren’t equally interested in the service, then the financial burden shouldn’t be equal either.

This commenter thinks the homeowner really needs to sacrifice the whole driveway if they don’t want to help pay.

The storms may have passed, but the iciness between these neighbors remains.

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.