HOW TO RECONCILE THE ACTUAL SITUATION WITH LAND REGISTERS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SUITABLE DOCUMENT?

Although the majority of citizens are so far familiar with the land registry system and the rigorously formal rules that accompany it, most still do not know of an exception to the above.

Namely, individual rectification proceedings are a kind of exception that enables the interested party to register the right of ownership if he proves a justified reason. The same can be proved by a certain document (cadastral possession sheet, private or public document or other act) which shows that the party is the owner of the property, but the document, for some reason, is not suitable for implementation in the land register, whether it has irreparable deficiencies or the land registry is out-of-date.

The mentioned justified interest must be made probable when initiating the procedure itself, otherwise the court will reject the proposal. A mitigating circumstance is that a party can prove a legal interest at the level of probability at the very beginning of the proceedings, and it is up to the court to determine in the proceedings whether all other necessary conditions have been met.

In the regular land registry procedure, the so-called "devil's proof" is required for the registration of property rights, i.e. endless proof of the acquisition of the right of ownership on a valid legal basis from a person who has also acquired the right of ownership on the basis of a valid legal basis (usually public or private certified documents).

However, in this procedure, the Land Registry Act does not mention a public document, but only a document, so it can be assumed that a document submitted by a party as proof of justification of the proposal can also be a private document - e.g. a contract without a certified signature.

In practice, there will often be a situation where the party has a valid legal basis, but due to irremediable deficiencies in the document of his predecessor in title proving ownership, the formal preconditions for registration are not met. Also, for example, it is possible that the party has a valid legal basis - a contract for the sale of real estate certified by a notary public, however, the contract does not specify his personal identification number (OIB), without which it has been impossible since 2015 to register in the land books.

It is for such situations that the legislator introduced this procedure into the Land Registry Act. This will often be the only way to reconcile the real situation on the ground with the situation in the land registry, given the current general lack of knowledge of the land registry. Through the wider application of this procedure, courts can influence legal certainty and the realization of the principle of trust in land registers.

Our law firm has thus participated in a number of successful individual rectification proceedings, initiated precisely in cases where a party has a right that is not registered in the land register, and there is no suitable document on the basis of which this right could be registered.