Is authorisation of an easement agreement by a lawyer sufficient, or do we need an officially certified signature?

A landowner grants a neighbour a right of way, or parents reserve a lifetime right of use when transferring their house to their children. A lawyer prepares the agreement and offers to authorise it, a procedure you may know from buying an apartment. For a purchase agreement, authorisation replaces signature certification and shortens the land registry’s decision period. It does not have these effects for a standalone easement agreement.

Which agreements a lawyer may authorise

The Legal Profession Act defines authorisation as drafting an agreement transferring real estate, a company’s founding document, an agreement transferring an ownership interest in a company or a shareholders’ agreement, together with verifying the parties’ identities and assessing the agreement (Section 1a(1) of Act No. 586/2003 Z. z.). Corporate documents were added to this list with effect from 17 August 2026 by Act No. 29/2026 Z. z. An agreement creating an easement is not on the list. The Act recognises authorisation of another document only where the Commercial Code or specific legislation requires this form (Section 1a(2)), and the Cadastral Act does not require it for an easement.

The Cadastral Act attaches the following benefits to authorisation, all of which are limited to agreements transferring real estate:

• the land registry assesses the agreement only for consistency with the cadastral records and compliance with procedural requirements (Section 31(2)),
• it decides on the application within 20 days if the agreement is consistent with the cadastral records and the procedural requirements are met; otherwise, within 30 days (Section 32(1) and (2)),
• signatures on the agreement do not need to be certified (Section 42(3)).

Whose signature must be certified

The following quotation is reproduced in its original language:

Podpis prevodcu na zmluve, podpis povinného z predkupného práva, podpis povinného v prípade vzniku vecného bremena alebo podpis oprávneného v prípade zániku vecného bremena na zmluve, podpisy spoluvlastníkov na zmluve o zrušení a vyporiadaní podielového spoluvlastníctva alebo pri vyporiadaní bezpodielového spoluvlastníctva manželov musia byť osvedčené podľa osobitných predpisov […]

§ 42 ods. 3 katastrálneho zákona

If these persons are represented, their signatures on the powers of attorney must also be certified. The Act provides an exception where a party is a state authority, Slovenský pozemkový fond, a municipality, a self-governing region or Železnice Slovenskej republiky, and for an agreement transferring real estate executed as a notarial deed or authorised by a lawyer. The exception for an authorised agreement does not apply to a standalone agreement creating or extinguishing an easement.

The Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre Authority of the Slovak Republic (ÚGKK) stated in Cadastral Bulletin 1/2023 that registration under an easement agreement which a lawyer has “authorised” may be approved. However, the land registry will review it in full under Section 31(1), decide within 30 days and require a certified signature from the burdened party. If certification is missing, ÚGKK’s earlier interpretation in Cadastral Bulletin 1/2019 treats this, in principle, as a remediable defect rather than a ground for refusal. The land registry will suspend the proceedings and request that the defect be remedied by an addendum containing the requisite elements of the agreement. If the addendum is not submitted within the time limit, it will discontinue the proceedings (Section 31b(1), letter f)). An easement created by agreement only comes into existence upon registration (Section 151o(1) of the Civil Code), so every suspension also delays the creation of the right itself.

In Slovakia, a signature on a document may be certified by a notary, a municipality or a district office. A lawyer has no such authority under Slovak law. Certification confirms only who signed the document; its contents are not assessed (Section 14(3) of Act No. 78/2026 Z. z.; for a notary, Section 58(4) of the Notarial Code). We explain the distinction from authorisation in the question certified signature or lawyer authorisation.

An easement as part of a gift or sale

The situation differs where an easement forms part of a transfer agreement, for example when a house is gifted with a lifetime right of use reserved for the donors. In its earlier opinion from 2009 in Cadastral Bulletin 3/2009, ÚGKK stated that it does not require signature certification for such an authorised agreement if it involves the same parties and the same property, and the easement is directly connected with the transfer. According to the same opinion, the land registry conducts a limited review of the transfer and a full review of the easement, while the 20-day decision period applies to the entire agreement. The Act does not expressly address this situation. It exempts a transfer agreement from signature certification without stating whether the exemption also covers an easement created in the same document. This is an earlier interpretation by ÚGKK. We discuss gifts with a lifetime right of use in the question gifting a house with a lifetime right of residence.

How we can help

We will prepare the easement agreement, tell you in advance whose signature needs certification and submit the application for registration as part of our easement service. For a sale or gift that includes an easement, we will draft and authorise the agreement as part of our service for the authorisation of real estate transfer agreements.