Declaration of ownership

The court grants a declaration claim only if you have an urgent legal interest in the declaration — put simply, if your legal position is uncertain and a declaratory judgment will remove that uncertainty. This typically arises where someone else is registered in the Land Register or there is a duplicate entry, preventing you from dealing with the property without a judgment. If the same result can be achieved by another, more direct route, the court will dismiss the claim — so we assess its suitability first.

A situation where the Land Register records two mutually incompatible ownership entries for the same property — most often following historical allocations, incomplete inheritance proceedings or errors during renewal of the records. The Land Register does not decide the duplication itself; it only marks it. The true owner is determined by agreement between the affected persons or by a court.

Under § 134 of the Civil Code, a lawful possessor becomes the owner of immovable property after ten years of continuous possession; lawful possession by a legal predecessor also counts towards this period. Good faith is essential — throughout the period, considering all circumstances, you must have believed the property belonged to you, for example on the basis of a document later found to be defective. We assess whether the conditions are met before you submit anything.

Candidly — court proceedings for a declaration of ownership commonly take years, particularly where expert evidence, survey records or testimony about possession decades ago are needed. Costs depend on the scope of evidence, so we do not quote a flat amount — you receive an agreed fee before each stage and are kept informed throughout. That is precisely why we first assess whether the dispute is worthwhile given the property’s value.

During proceedings, we request a dispute note — anyone considering dealing with the property learns of the dispute directly from the title deed. The final judgment declaring ownership then serves as the document on which the Land Register registers the true owner; we prepare the submission and oversee registration.

It does more than it may seem. The operative part of a final judgment declaring a right in rem to immovable property also binds a person concerned by an application for registration if that application was filed when a note of court proceedings was already entered in the Land Register (§ 228(2) of the Code of Civil Contentious Procedure). Someone buying the property during the dispute therefore gains no protection. The note alone is insufficient, however — the provision relates to registration applications, meaning contractual transfers, and does not cover a change of owner occurring in another way, such as the auctioneer’s award at auction. Alongside the note, we therefore generally also seek an interim injunction prohibiting any dealings with the property.