Can you take fruit from your neighbor’s tree in Miami? Here’s what to know

Miami-Dade County admin July 23, 2026 0 Comments

Can you take fruit from your neighbor’s tree in Miami? Here’s what to know

Mangoes are ripe for the picking in South Florida and the avocado trees are full. But just because you can reach a low-hanging fruit, doesn’t mean you should.

In fact, snatching fruit that’s not yours can have legal consequences.

Could you face criminal charges for stealing fruit from someone’s tree?

In Miami-Dade County, you can’t take “plants, fruits, plant products, or nursery stock contained within any nursery or private or public property without the consent of the owner of the property,” according to the county’s code of ordinances.

According to the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Office, picking fruit off an overhanging branch can result in a $200 civil citation or even criminal charges.

If you enter another person’s property to harvest your bounty, you can face even more trouble — trespassing and theft charges. Doing so can result in penalties, attorney fees and enforcement proceedings, according to the ordinance.

But what if the tree hangs over your yard?

Michael Gulisano, an attorney with Gulisano Law in Palm Beach, said that “the situation changes if a neighbor’s tree, including its branches and fruit, extends onto your property.”

Gallo v. Heller, the 1987 court case in Miami-Dade County, established that the property owner is not responsible for any inconvenience caused by their trees or plants, such as vegetation that extends onto a neighbor’s property. The case also determined that the neighbor has the right to trim any greenery that encroaches onto their property.

According to Gulisano, this means that if a branch from a mango tree overhangs onto your yard, you can legally trim the branch and keep the fruit.

Gulisano says that if fruit-bearing branches from a neighbor’s tree encroach on your property in a way that you can pick the fruit without leaving your property, the county’s ordinance doesn’t apply. That part of the tree is legally on your property.

“If you are legally allowed to cut a fruit-bearing branch that encroaches on your property, I don’t see any legal rationale for saying you can’t pick the fruit instead of cutting the branch back to the property line,” Gulisano said.

“I don’t believe there is any legal impediment if, instead of trimming overhanging branches from your neighbor’s tree, you allow them to remain overhanging onto your property and pick fruit from them as they grow,” Gulisano said.

“The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office are not attorneys”

A recent social media post from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office contradicts this, saying that “if the tree is rooted on private property, the fruit belongs to the property owner.”

But Guilsano thinks the post missed some nuance.

“The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office are not attorneys,” Gulisano said. “However, since they enforce the law, I think it is better to err on the side of caution. I would note the post only refers to fruit hanging over a fence line generally but does not refer to the specific instance where it’s actually hanging over onto your property.”

“I disagree with the interpretation of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office to the extent it includes the specific instance where the fruit is hanging over from a neighbor’s property onto your property,” Gulisano said. “As mentioned before, I don’t see any logical explanation for why you can cut tree branches that cross on to your property but you couldn’t pick fruit from that same branch.”

The situation becomes less complicated if a mango from a neighbor’s tree falls onto your property. In that case, it is definitely yours. It would be illegal trespassing for the neighbor to enter your property to gather the fruit that fell from their tree — so you become the owner of the fruit, Gulisano said.

“I don’t know why they would, but if the neighbor has some issue with this, they can trim their tree so that its fruit does not fall on your property,” Gulisano said.

Always talk to your neighbor

“In any event, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would suggest simply talking to your neighbor,” Gulisano said. “I would like to believe that most neighbors would not have any objection to you picking fruit from a tree branch that hangs over onto your property.”

“When in doubt, always ask before you pick,” the sheriff’s office said in the post’s caption.

Gulisano said that until the county’s ordinance “is used against someone, and that person challenges the ordinance in court on the grounds I articulated, we won’t know for sure.”

“The beauty of the law is that it is often open to multiple interpretations. However, the courts determine which interpretation of the law is correct,” Gulisano said.