Q WE live in a semi detached home and our adjoining neighbours have one of the most overgrown gardens and gutters you could imagine.

When it rains, the excess from theirs falls into ours. Can we force them to get their gutters cleaned and their garden tidied up?

A THERE are legal powers to prevent neighbours letting property go to rack and ruin and affecting yours.

As well as neighbour nuisance laws, your title deeds will probably have provision about this. The local authority has powers to force householders to tidy up. The first port of call is the council's environmental health department to see what they can do.

If you need more fire-power, see your solicitor about a strongly worded letter to the neighbour.

Q MY aunt has been diagnosed with dementia, and I had heard you can't make a power of attorney if you have this.

I need to help her with financial things while she is still in her own home.

AS long as she is lucid enough to understand and wishes to appoint you, and is able to sign or instruct a signature by a lawyer, she can grant the power as a voluntary deed.

If she cannot any longer actively comprehend the process, you must go for a guardianship or intervention order. That is a more expensive procedure and has to go to court.

QDURING the last few months a building site has appeared on the same site where, over the last 10 years, there have been two other building sites.

This time around they have powered the site with a massive generator, which is on 24/7. I have complained to the correct departments and been told they are monitoring it.

It is now five weeks since I last had contact and nothing has been done. I can't open my windows at night as it sounds like a taxi sitting outside my window.

AYou need to make yourself the distressed local citizen and chase up the environmental health, and building control departments and your local councillor – that's what they are all paid for.

In purely legal terms, you (and others if you get together) can raise an interdict action in the sheriff court seeking an order to restrict the hours and the noise, and seek costs and any compensation for losses or damage sustained.

QMY wife and I are thinking of selling up and going abroad.

The house is paid off and worth over £300,000. Would I be liable for capital gains tax?

A If it is your own home you are selling, there is no capital gains tax. If you were to split the proceeds and buy two houses, any future gain on this may be liable to CGT.