Last week the Ceule family from Assebroek, just outside Bruges, heard from a court that they would not have to pay a fine imposed after they failed to tear down a treehouse in their garden built for their two children, aged five and six. The family had been ordered to do away with the simple platform around the tree.

The reason was that their neighbour had complained to the justice of the peace, claiming it was a breach of his privacy since the children could look over the fence and into his house. The platform, to judge by photos, was all of about one metre high. The neighbour did not reveal what might be disrupted by the gaze of a five- or six-year-old, but that is his right.

"Any given sunny day off," the neighbour wrote, "would be marked by the inevitable screaming, crying and hammering of children. We have had to put up with behaviour from these children that we would never have tolerated from our own."

The justice took his side, and the Ceule family was ordered in March to take down the structure or face a fine of €100 a day. They appealed, in the meantime taking down part of the treehouse. The failure to comply fully, documented by photos from the neighbour, should have cost them a €700 fine, but justice last week saw sense. The treehouse was effectively gone, so there would be no fine.

Stories of neighbours complaining about noisy children playing in parks, schools and even their own gardens are a regular feature of the news pages these days. Slightly more unusual was the take of Kamiel the donkey, whose owner Ingrid De Win found herself ordered to pay damages of more than €2,000 after a neighbour complained about Kamiel's braying.

Not only that, but Kamiel would have to move from his home in Boortmeerbeek in Flemish Brabant. An family 30 kilometres away in Wolvertem adopted Kamiel. As for Ingrid, she's left with a bill for more than €5,000 damages and fines, for which she's received contributions from friends and Facebook supporters, though not presumably from her neighbours.