Neighbor Fence Etiquette In MN?

[Christina Vescio]

Hello, 

new poster here. I seem to be getting mixed answered regarding this topic.

If I pay for my privacy fence and it is 1 foot inside my property from a chain link fence that divides our neighbors backyards, can I have the finished side facing inside my backyard? 

Here is why we want a privacy fence inside the chain link fence:

-our backyard neighbors house is vacant it gets rented and nobody seems to stay there and that yard is never kept up with we can manage the care of our fence.

-our neighbors to the right have a privacy fence so we are leaving that side alone.

-our neighbors to our left won't respect our wishes and always feed our dogs (they think behind our backs but we installed cameras.) They also enter our yard to put things in our yard like toys they bought for our dogs or to talk to our children when we aren't outside. They always call our dogs to the fence and encourage them to jump the fence and bring them back to our yard and actually enter without permission. We've told them not to even touch or encourage our dogs but for some reason they refuse to respect our wishes and we only have insurance on them inside our property lines.

-we want our property line to be very clear so that instead of building on the shared property line risking the neighbors having a say so in the boundary we will have our full on privacy. 

-The reason we want our fence inside the already chain gate is so that we have full responsibility for up keep and know it gets done correctly.

Why we want the finished side on the inside:

We want the finished side on the inside so our boys won't climb on our fence and neither will our dogs it will also be harder for our dogs to chew the finished side. And due to the neighbors to our left the space between our house is separated by the chain link fence the rest of our property and then their garage and their drive way so appearance won't matter in their case. The backyard neighbors as mentioned before no one lives there or up keeps the property.