Neighbor Demanding $ For Our Share Of Fence

Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Oklahoma does have a shared fence statute that treats fences as shared responsibility between neighbors on both sides of the fence.

Our understanding after reading it is that in order to claim shared costs, there should be proper notification for new fences or repairs and written agreements between neighbors for shared costs.

The problem is that our neighbor is now demanding money for "our share" the fence install after the fact without written notification or agreement on shared costs. He came over to introduce himself and advise us to keep any pets inside on the day he was having some work done. No mention of costs or expectation of our share. We now have a copy of the full invoice and we would not have agreed to these costs with notification. They picked some more expensive options.

We plan to write a response letter that because there was no prior written agreement of costs, we will not be paying the full "share." Now that I'm cooled off from the initial request, I might be willing to discuss contributing a smaller amount than we have been invoiced.

We really don't have extra funds at the moment so a large surprise cost, even paying in installments, is a huge blow. (Trying to save up for medical stuff, not strictly necessary relevant details but not something we can put to the side and start over saving for later.)

Are we right in our understanding of the shared fence laws, that we aren't on the hook because neighbor failed to notify and get a prior agreement? Or does enforcement of the law tend to end up with neighbors forced to pay out regardless?

Thank you for your time.

Edit to add: From our perspective the fence would have been fine with repairs (reseating some posts) but did not need to be fully replaced (at least on the panels our properties share). We are considering calling another fencing company to get a quote on that, and maybe discussing sharing costs on what that project would have been since that is what we would have agreed to if the neighbors had properly notified. In the interest of keeping a good neighborhood relationship, since we plan to stay in this home for many years.