Acquisitive prescription of land: when ten years of possession suffice for ownership and how it reaches the cadastre

Where land is concerned, the discrepancy between the cadastre and reality is often decades old. Parents bought part of a garden from a neighbour under a contract that was never registered, the fence stands somewhere other than the boundary shown on the map, or the land has been passed down in the family for generations without any probate proceedings. The Civil Code provides for such situations through acquisitive prescription: a long-standing state of affairs held in good faith becomes, under statutory conditions, the legal state of affairs. It does not, however, find its way into the cadastre by itself, and not every long period of possession meets the conditions.

Three statutory conditions

The basic rule is short:

A possessor in good faith becomes the owner of the property if he has had it in uninterrupted possession for three years in the case of movable property and for ten years in the case of immovable property.

— Section 134(1) of Act No. 40/1964 Coll. (unofficial English translation)

The first condition is possession, that is, dealing with the land as one’s own (Section 129(1)). Neither a tenant nor a person who uses the land with the owner’s permission is a possessor in this sense, because neither asserts ownership for himself. The second is that the possession be in good faith: having regard to all the circumstances, the possessor must believe that the land belongs to him, and in case of doubt good faith is presumed (Section 130(1)). The third is that possession be uninterrupted for ten years. Lawful possession by a legal predecessor, for instance a parent from whom the land passed, is counted towards the period (Section 134(3)). Property that may be owned only by the state or by legal persons designated by statute cannot be acquired by prescription (Section 134(2)).

Good faith and the missing title

Older judicial practice often ruled out acquisitive prescription where the acquirer had no valid title, for example where the contract lacked the prescribed form or was never registered. In judgment II. ÚS 484/2015 the Constitutional Court described such an interpretation as impermissibly restrictive, and the grand chamber of the Supreme Court held in judgment 1VCdo/1/2024 of 13 May 2024 that a legal title is only one of the pieces of evidence of good faith and that its absence does not in itself make the possession unlawful. What is decisive is whether the possessor acted honestly, that is, whether he paid the agreed price for the land, provided other agreed consideration or demonstrably received it as a gift.

How this looks in a particular case is shown by the order of the Supreme Court in case 3Cdo/23/2025 of 25 March 2026. In 1955 the buyers purchased an entire parcel from two co-owners, even though a third co-owner was also recorded in the land book. The lower courts refused them prescription of her share for want of title. The Supreme Court set the decision aside: the buyers had paid the purchase price and had paid property tax throughout, which are circumstances indicating honest acquisition.

There are limits too. A person who knows that the land belongs to someone else and uses it nonetheless is not in good faith, however long that lasts. The court assesses the possessor’s belief objectively, by reference to the circumstances he could and should have known, not by reference to what he says today.

How prescription reaches the cadastre

Acquisitive prescription operates directly by law, on the expiry of the period. It is therefore entered in the cadastre not by constitutive registration but by a declaratory record on the basis of a public document:

Rights to immovable property […] which arose, changed or ceased by operation of law, by a decision of a state authority, […] by acquisitive prescription, by accession and by processing, and rights to immovable property certified by a notary […] are entered in the cadastre by way of a declaratory record, on the basis of public documents and other documents.

— Section 34(1) of Act No. 162/1995 Coll. (unofficial English translation)

Such a document may be a court order confirming acquisitive prescription. Since May 2021, when notarial certification of a declaration of prescription was abolished, the Code of Civil Non-Contentious Procedure has provided for special proceedings which commence only on the application of the person claiming to have acquired ownership by prescription (Sections 359c and 359d). The applicant must describe and substantiate the facts from which prescription follows and identify the day on which ownership was acquired. If the court considers them substantiated, it issues a summoning order, publishes it in the Commercial Bulletin and on the municipal notice board, a note on the proceedings is entered in the cadastre, and the registered owner, his successors, the Slovak Land Fund and anyone else may lodge objections; the period for doing so may not be shorter than six months from publication (Section 359f(3)). Where nobody raises a well-founded objection, the court confirms the prescription:

A final order confirming acquisitive prescription is binding on everyone.

— Section 359k(1) of Act No. 161/2015 Coll. (unofficial English translation)

A person who was unable through no fault of his own to raise objections may still assert his right by a claim (Section 359k(2)), but a person who subsequently buys in good faith from an owner confirmed in this way is protected as if he were buying from the owner (Section 359k(3)). The proceedings are suitable where the position is undisputed but the registered owner died long ago or cannot be traced. If someone lodges a well-founded objection, the court dismisses the application (Section 359i(1)) and the dispute moves to proceedings for a declaration of title under Section 137(c) of the Code of Civil Contentious Procedure. You have an urgent legal interest in a declaratory claim where the cadastre records someone else as the owner, because the judgment will serve as the basis for changing the entry; the Supreme Court summarised this in its order in case 9Cdo/251/2021 as well.

What prescription stands or falls on in a dispute

Evidence has to be gathered before the other side speaks up. Old contracts help, even invalid or unregistered ones, as do proof of payment of the price, property tax decisions, photographs of fences and buildings, geometric plans and witnesses who remember who used the land and from when. A common weakness is interruption of possession, for example where someone else farmed the land for years, and a lack of precision: the court has to be shown exactly which part of the land you possessed, often by means of a new geometric plan.

Before you take any step, it is worth establishing whether the matter is in fact an error in the cadastre, which is dealt with in correcting an error in the cadastre, land with no title sheet (see the question on unregistered land without a title sheet) or a duplicate entry. We assess the conditions for prescription from the documents you hold and, if they hold up, prepare an application for confirmation of prescription or a claim and conduct the proceedings through to registration as part of our declaration of title service.

How this will work under the new Civil Code

On 1 October 2026, the National Council of the Slovak Republic approved the new Slovak Civil Code, which will take effect on 1 July 2027. The basis of acquisitive prescription remains. Land is acquired by prescription by a person who has it in lawful possession without interruption for ten years, and lawful possession by a legal predecessor is also counted. Good faith will be presumed, but a person who neglected due care will not be in good faith. Only practice will show how decisions on a missing title will build on this standard. Two new rules will be added and one will be regulated expressly:

• possession will be interrupted if the possessor does not exercise it for more than one year during the prescription period; occasional use of a garden or a cottage alone, however, does not yet mean that the possessor did not exercise possession,
• if a court upholds an action against the possessor, the possession will be deemed unlawful at the latest from service of the action,
• if the registered owner needs a statutory representative or a guardian and does not have one, the prescription period will begin to run against the owner only from that person’s appointment; today this follows from applying the rules on limitation mutatis mutandis, whereas the new Act states it expressly.

Prescription periods that began to run by 30 June 2027 will be assessed under the existing Act until they expire. The new code does not itself change the proceedings for confirmation of acquisitive prescription or entry by way of a declaratory record.

Registration will, however, matter more than it does today. The new Act protects a person who acquires immovable property for value and in good faith from a person registered in the cadastre. Whether this protection will also apply against a person who acquired by prescription but did not have the ownership registered is not certain, and the Act has no transitional rule for such old discrepancies. If you have documents proving that the conditions for acquisitive prescription are met, therefore, do not put off dealing with registration. The appropriate application or action must be chosen according to the documents and the nature of the dispute; ten years of use alone is not enough. A note on the proceedings in the cadastre will then make it harder for a buyer to claim that they acted in good faith.

Status as of 22 October 2026: the act has been approved and was signed by the President on 20 October 2026, but has not yet been promulgated in the Collection of Laws. Until 30 June 2027, the rules described above in this article apply.