Anyone know a good lawyer?

Because apparently our next door neighbor is going to sue us.

If the tree in our front yard falls on her house.

Here's the deal. We have a grouping of three birch trees in our front yard. Now - our house is "cozy" to put it nicely and there are a lot of improvements that an improvement-minded couple could undertake - but those birch trees and the size of the kitchen and the fireplace are what sold me on the house. I don't claim to be a... well... whomever it would be that would know a lot about trees, so I don't know, maybe the tree is dying. But is it going to fall over today? No. Tomorrow? No. Next month? Probably not.

Let's back up. Old Crusty, as we'll call our evil neighbor, first approached Pat last summer. They were having a conversation about whatever, and Pat mentioned that we needed to take out the row of poorly-maintained shrubs that separates our yard from Old Crusty's. And she agreed that would be great- they were unsightly and we hadn't touched them since we bought the place in 2001. I know we are not the most desirable of neighbors from time to time, our lawn tends to be a tad underwatered, undermowed and undertended in general. And we have a big dog. Who leaves big poops. But damn it, yardwork just isn't our bag, baby. And we live next to ALL RETIRED PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO ALL DAY BUT WORK ON THEIR YARDS. So that makes us look even worse. Anyway - back to the story. So then a while later OC comes a-knockin' on our front door. I answered. She hands me a card for a tree removal guy and says that she just used him for a tree in her backyard and he was reasonable and we should use him for the birch because he said it was dying and she'd hate to have to sue us if it fell on her house. *crickets chirping* I wasn't sure what to say to that. So I just said "yes, Old Crusty, that would be too bad, wouldn't it?" And closed the door. ???!?! What the hell?

Fast forward to last Friday. I got the mail and noticed an envelope hiding at the bottom of the closet under one of Pat's shoes. I'm not sure how long it had been there, could have been there a while or could have been left that day. (Let me explain our mailslot... it goes from the outside of the house directly into our front closet. It requires acrobatics to make sure you retrieved all of the mail. Big fat pain in my big fat butt.) The thin envelope was simply addressed to "Pat" and contained one sheet of lined paper. This is what it said:

Pat,
Please take down that tree in the front yard. If it would come down on my house I'd have to sue you. It would be better to pay for the tree removal then damage to my home.
Old Crusty

I'm not *always* a completely unreasonable person. It would be unfortunate to have a tree come down on her house. I'm not begrudging her that fact. But what the hell is up with this suing us business?? That's the second threat we've gotten and if she thinks she's scaring us, she's sorrily mistaken. If anything her scare tactic is completely backfiring and we're going to leave the damn tree there just out of spite. AND if anything else, the part of the tree that leans the most toward OUR house may be the most damaged. I don't know, I guess we just need someone to come out and look at it, but I don't want to give OC the satisfaction of thinking that her harassment has worked. Ugh. I'm so incredible peeved. And sad - I really like that tree. Yes, it's a birch and it drops a bunch of twigs as birches tend to do, but it's pretty and I like it and I'm sad that we didn't water it as much as we should have a couple of summers ago when it was ungodly hot and we should have known better and watered more. I know it means a lot to get along with your neighbors, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable in being very annoyed at her threats. She never even asked us reasonably about the tree. So I let off some steam by writing her some nasty letters back - which I threw away, of course, and good thing since the nicest of them told her that she was old and so was the tree so we were just going to let nature take it's course with both of them - and now I guess we just sit and wait. And see which way the tree falls. So if you know a good lawyer, let us know, just in case the wind isn't blowing in our direction that day.

Alright, so maybe we'll give in and have the blasted tree removed... but we're sure as heck going to let her sit there and stew about it for a good while first. Oh yeah - stew away Old Crusty One, stew away.