Iowa's distinctive partition-fence law, Iowa Code Chapter 359A, makes adjoining rural landowners share the cost of a division fence, with township trustees acting as fence viewers to settle disputes. It still matters across rural Johnson County.
Iowa is one of the states that requires neighbors to share a boundary fence. Under Iowa Code Section 359A.1A, adjoining landowners must, on written request, build and maintain a partition fence or contribute to it. When they cannot agree, the elected township trustees act as fence viewers, inspect the line, and apportion each owner's share, a mechanism still used across the farmland of the Iowa River valley. In town, cost-sharing is invoked less often, and city fence disputes usually turn on the survey and zoning code. Iowa has no dedicated spite-fence statute today, but a fence built maliciously to annoy can be challenged as a nuisance under Iowa Code Chapter 657.
If a neighbor refuses to share a partition fence, the township fence viewers can assign and enforce each owner's portion under Chapter 359A. Boundary and spite-fence disputes otherwise go to civil court.
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See how Johnson County's neighbor fence rules rules stack up against other locations.
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