Illinois has no residential cost-sharing fence statute, so a shared fence between two homes is voluntary. But across Champaign County's vast farmland the Illinois Fence Act (765 ILCS 130) does bind adjoining rural owners to split a division fence.
For city and village homes in Champaign, Urbana, or Rantoul, no law forces a neighbor to pay half of a boundary fence; any split is a private, written agreement, and a survey settles the true line before you build. Farm country is different. Champaign County is overwhelmingly agricultural and sits under 1,000,000 in population, so the Illinois Fence Act reaches adjoining tracts of cultivated or enclosed land: each owner must make and maintain a just proportion of the division fence, and disputes can be resolved by the township fence viewers. A fence built purely to spite a neighbor remains a common-law nuisance a court can order removed.
Between rural landowners, a neighbor who refuses their share of a division fence can be assessed by the township fence viewers under the Fence Act. Encroaching or spite fences are resolved as civil matters in circuit court.
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See how Urbana's neighbor fence rules rules stack up against other locations.
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