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Ivanka Trump Gets in Parking Feud With Neighbors: Guess Who’s Right?

There goes the neighborhood! Apparently Ivanka Trump‘s new Washington, DC, neighbors are up in arms about her Secret Service agents hogging all the primo parking spots on their street.

Granted, the suburb of Kalorama—where the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, had moved to in January—is no stranger to navigating security detail. After all, former President Barack Obama and his family live right down the street and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is nearby as well.

Therefore, we’re inclined to assume that Kalorama residents are used to the occasional blockade, as well as fleets of mirror-windowed SUVs driven by serious-looking dudes in black suits. So what’s the big deal?

“They’ve completely taken over the whole street. As if they have the authority!” – Marti Robinson, who lives across the street from Ivanka Trump

Well, according to the Washington Post, this security detail is presumptuous about what territory it can lay claim to. For one, it had barricaded the sidewalk around the Trump-Kushner residence, forcing pedestrians to take a circuitous and somewhat perilous path out into the street. It had also planted “No Parking” signs on the curb to ensure that these spots are reserved for agents. But even that wasn’t enough. Just ask next-door neighbor Rhona Friedman, who discovered two more “No Parking” signs on the street last week in front of her house.

“I started screaming,” Friedman, an attorney, told the Post. Then she started emailing city officials, as did a dozen other area residents. The Secret Service has since backed off, removing the signs outside Friedman’s house. But by now, neighborly goodwill has taken a hit.

Attorney Marti Robinson, who lives across the street from Trump, told the Post: “They’ve completely taken over the whole street. As if they have the authority!”

The eternal street parking dispute: What do homeowners actually own?

It led us to wonder: What kind of legal rights do homeowners have to the parking spots near, or even directly in front of, their own homes?

In an urban or suburban setting where the street outside the street is public property, the short answer is: not many. So the Trump security detail did indeed overstep its bounds.

“You cannot own parking spaces adjacent to your home that are located on a public street,” explains Robert Pellegrini, an attorney and president of Pellegrini Keogh Law in Boston. “Sometimes, when talking about a condominium, a parking space may be included with the deed, but those spaces must be located on the condo’s property, not on the public street.”

Perhaps you’ve encountered a quandary like this in your own life. A neighbor—who’s lived there for decades—claims the spots across from his house are exclusively for him and his guests.

“This is not based on anything legal; it’s just tradition,” he says. But in a purely legal sense, as long as the street is public, the parking spots on it are actually open on a first-come, first-serve basis.

What should you do if a dispute arises?

All of which means that if your neighbors give you grief about how the spot in front of their house is theirs and theirs alone, this “claim” won’t stand up in court.

If your dispute becomes a problem, there are a number of steps you can take to resolve it. First, establish who actually owns the area outside their house by asking for paperwork as proof.

“Nicely request to see the document that is the basis for their ownership,” says Jo Benson Fogel, an attorney in Maryland. “You can also call the public safety administration that is responsible for maintenance of the roadway and find out if they have any legal designations of the spaces outside your neighbor’s house.”

Pellegrini recommends involving city officials early on. “If your neighbor insists they own public property, the city might be willing to straighten the neighbor out, as far as the law is concerned,” he says.

And just in case things get ornery, document all of your communication with your neighbor over the dispute, including written notices, emails, or text messages. Hopefully things can be settled amicably. But let’s face it: Sometimes good parking spots make people do bad things.

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